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THE 



Essays of an Optimist. 



BY 



JOHN WILLIAM KAYE, F.R.S., 

AUTHOR OF 

HISTORY OF THE WAR IN AFFGHANISTAN," "LIFE OF LORD 
METCALFE," "HISTORY OF THE SEPOY WAR," ETC. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
1871. 






*, mi 



TO THE FRIENDS 

WHOSE UNFAILING KINDNESS HAS SUSTAINED THROUGH LIFE 
MY FAITH IN MY FELLOW-MEN, 



fyi§ pttlt |ooh 



IS GRATEFULLY AND LOVINGLY INSCRIBED. 



PREFACE. 



r I A HE papers now gathered together in this 
-*■ volume have been composed at intervals 
during the last ten years, and have been published 
in the Cornhill Magazine. They have been mostly 
written at times when I have been separated from 
the materials of my graver work, from books and 
documents and piles of correspondence; written 
in country inns, or seaside lodgings, or other 
strange places far away from home ; when I have 
wished not to be quite idle, but when I could not, 
if I would, have devoted myself to more substan- 
tial labors, and, very truthfully, I may add, when 
I would not if I could. They have been princi- 
pally holiday-tasks, written by snatches, and sent 
off, piece by piece, as they were written — the 
loose thoughts of a loose thinker, desultory, 
discursive, pretending only to express in plain 
colloquial language some of the opinions and 
experiences of the writer on subjects within the 
range of our common sympathies. 

(v) 



vi PREFACE. 

I had no particular design when I wrote them. 
I did not purpose that, running on in one groove, 
they should illustrate any special philosophy. 
But on reperusing them, I have thought that there 
is a prevailing unity of sentiment in the Essays, 
which warrants the descriptive title which I have 
given to them ; and not the less so, because this 
harmony is the result, not of any foregone inten- 
tion, but of the spontaneous repetitions of the 
writer — those involuntary harpings upon the same 
string, which come from a settled faith in the 
truths which thus seek utterance in his pages. 
The doctrine is nothing more than that it is wise 
to look for good in everything, or, more closely 
to represent the name which I have chosen, to 
" make the best of it." There are some natures 
which recognize this truth unawares — which do 
not know it, do not think of it, but habitually feel 
it. To them it is a sentiment, not a doctrine. It ex- 
presses itself in the divine incense of thanksgiving 
to God, mingled with unfailing charity towards 
Man. It rises up heavenwards in great paeans of 
praise and love warm from the heart. For readers 
of this kind there is no need that Essays on Op- 
timism should be written. But there are others 
to whom it may be profitable thus to be taught 



PREFACE. vii 

to look ever for the bright side, alike of what 
comes from God and what comes from Man — to 
rejoice always in the unceasing goodness of the 
Almighty, and to discern good, wheresoever they 
can find it, in the lives of their neighbors. In this 
Optimism are included Faith, Hope, and Charity 
— all three. We cannot, therefore, go far wrong 
in cultivating it; and there is nothing that will 
add more to our happiness than its cultivation, 
singing and making melody in our hearts and 
giving thanks always for all things. It makes 
sunshine in shady places, and keeps us in an 
habitual state, not only of resignation, but of 
cheerfulness. It would be absurd to say that I do 
not know anything that reconciles us more to the 
trials and troubles of life than an assured belief 
that all things work together for our good; for 
there is nothing else that, can reconcile us to them 
at all. There are few who do not recognize this 
truth in its general acceptation ; but do they prac- 
tically apply it to the details of life? "It con- 
duces much," says old Jeremy Taylor, "to our 
content, if we pass by those things which happen 
to our trouble, and consider that which is pleasing 
and prosperous, that by the representation of the 
better the worse may be blotted out." And he 



viii PREFACE. 

tells us how to do this, amidst all the chances and 
changes of life. There is a quaintness in some of 
his recommendations which may raise a smile; 
but there is not, on that account, less sound phi- 
losophy in them ; and we may profitably ponder 
what he says.* 

And then with respect to our faith in our fellow- 
men, it is surely pleasanter to believe than to 
doubt, even though belief may bring its troubles 
with it. We may sometimes be mistaken, some- 
times deceived. All men are in the course of 
their lives. But what a balance of good is there 
on the other side ! Let us think of those whom 
we have found truthful and honorable, tender and 
generous, who have stood by us through good 
report and evil report — who have succored us in 
adversity and made us rejoice in our distresses, 
because without such trials we should not have 
proved the strength and genuineness of their affec- 
tion. And even to those who wrong us, our grati- 
tude is due. For if we had no wrongs to endure 
we should have nothing to forgive ; and the most 
godlike of all privileges would be denied to us. 

But now that I have collected these articles, 

* See the chapter on " Contentment" in the Holy Living, from 
which the passage in the text is taken. 



PREFACE. ix 

read them all over again (mostly after a long in- 
terval of time), and revised them for the Press, I 
do not — though from time to time, as fugitive 
pieces, they have earned encouraging eulogies 
both from friends and strangers — feel at all sure 
that they are worthy of preservation in this volume. 
Assailed by these misgivings, I must confess that 
I have a personal feeling to gratify (I do not mind 
its being called vanity) in acknowledging the pa- 
ternity of these papers, and endeavoring to obtain 
a few more readers for them. I have written some 
big books in my time, and I hope, if life be spared, 
to write some more. I was told, only the other 
day, by a very accomplished and learned friend, 
that I had just committed the grave mistake of 
writing one of the heaviest books ever written. 
On my expressing a modest regret that he had 
not been able to read it, he told me at once that 
he had not tried (and I never expect that he will 
try), but that it was a prodigious weight in his 
hands. I have got a fancy, therefore, to publish a 
little book, which will not be a burden to the flesh, 
and I hope not to the spirit, and so, perhaps, to 
find a score or two of readers, who have never 
ventured to make acquaintance with me in weighty 
historical volumes — friends, perhaps ; perhaps 



x PREFACE. 

strangers, who will not turn aside from this light 
bundle of Essays on everyday topics as from a 
heavy work on a subject of no personal interest to 
themselves ; whilst some, I hope, who have ven- 
tured on my bulkier efforts, will not be disinclined 
to follow me for a little space along new paths of 
inquiry. And if I should succeed either in making 
a new friend, or in pleasing an old one, through 
the help of this little volume, it will not have been 
published in vain. 

I have appended to each of the Essays the date 
at which it was originally published; so that, if 
any acute reader should discern that on some 
points there are slight divergencies of opinion (I 
do not say that there are any) scattered over the 
entire work, he may see in the later utterance the 
riper experience, the more mature judgment of 
the writer. I have added a few notes, dated 1870, 
which refer rather to change of circumstances than 
to change of opinion, following the first publica- 
tion of the Essays. 

J. W. K. 

Penge, October. 1870. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Holidays 13 

Work 36 

Success 77 

The Wrong Side of the Stuff 107 

On Growing Old 140 

On Toleration 175 

Rest .... . ... 219 



(xi) 



"He that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, 
is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who 
loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down on 
his little handful of thorns. such a person is fit to 
bear Nero company in his funeral sorrow for the loss 
of one of poppea's hairs, or help to mourn for lesbia's 
sparrow ; and because he loves it, he deserves to starve 
in the midst of plenty, and to want comfort whilst he 
IS encircled with blessings." — Jeremy Taylor. 



(xii) 



ESSAYS OF AN OPTIMIST, 



HOLIDAYS. 

IT is a blessed thought, all through the long 
work-day months of the early part of the year, 
that, if we only live long enough, we must drift 
into August. For with August comes to many 
toil-worn men — would that it came to all ! — one of 
God's best gifts to man, a holiday. There is a lull 
in the mighty clatter of the machinery of life ; the 
great wheels are still, or they gyrate slowly and 
noiselessly. How it happens, it is hard to say (and 
the harder the more you think about it, for man's 
wants and man's passions, which make work, are 
never still); but the Autumnal Sabbath comes 
round as surely as the shorter days and the yel- 
lower leaves ; and from the great heart of the me- 
tropolis we go out in search of a cheerier life and 
a fresher atmosphere. 

There is, doubtless, a special Providence decreeing 
this, so that even the delirium of kings, out of which 
come the wrestlings of nations, is for a time sub- 

(13) 



14 



HO LID A VS. 



dued ;* and thus the Nestors of the State are suf- 
fered, like meaner men, to grow young again in 
the heather and the turnip-field. The High Court 
of Parliament sets the example, removes itself from 
the sphere of our weekly prayers, and diffuses itself 
over vast expanses of country, in quest of new wis- 
dom and new strength, and plentiful amusement, 
which is both. Then Justice takes the bandage 
from her eyes, lays down her scales, tucks up her 
flowing robes, and girds herself for a walking tour 
half-way over Europe with a pipe in her mouth. 
The Exchange quickly follows suit. Commerce 
grows a moustache, assumes the wideawake, goes 
sketching on the Rhine, and draws pictures of 
Ehrenbreitstein, instead of bills of exchange. And 
so we all pour ourselves out into the great reser- 
voir of idleness ; and we do our appointed work 
thereby more surely than if we plodded all the 
time at our desks. 

We are coming to understand this, as a nation, 
better than we once did ; but we have not yet so 
hearty an appreciation of the truth, but that a few 
reflections on the subject from an old fellow like 

* A decade has passed since this was written (in i860), and the 
whirligig of time has brought in a terrible revenge. There now 
seems to be only a grim sarcasm in the simple words written ten 
years ago in such good faith and on what seemed to be the secu- 
rity of historical facts. But who will ever think, after this August 
of 1870, of the delirium of kings respecting the Holiday season ? — 
(1870.) 



BLESSINGS OF LABOR. 



15 



myself may have their uses just on the verge of 
autumn. What I have to say is mainly in praise 
of holidays. I have a becoming sense of what is 
called the " dignity of labor," but, more than that, 
I believe that of all the blessings and benignities 
of life, work is verily the greatest. The bread 
which we earn by the sweat of the brow, and 
brain-sweat is therein included, is the sweetest that 
is ever eaten. A dull life, and one that I would 
not care to live, would be a life without labor. So 
patent, indeed, is this — so often has it been demon- 
strated — that men not born to work, make work 
for themselves. Not being harnessed by the iron 
hand of Necessity into the go-cart of daily labor, 
they harness themselves into go-carts of their own, 
and drag the burden after them as lustily as the 
rest. We envy one another blindly and ignorantly, 
neither knowing our neighbor's sorenesses and suf- 
ferings, nor rightly appreciating beatitudes of our 
own. We have all our joys and sorrows — God be 
praised for both ! — and more equally dispensed 
than many care to acknowledge. Toil-worn men, 
indeed, will not readily believe that their hard, 
grinding work is foremost in the category of their 
blessings. They know it is very easy and very 
pleasant to be idle for a day, or for a week, per- 
haps for a month ; but if they were to try a life of 
idleness they would find how hard a life it is. The 
wise physician, who recommended Locuples, as a 
remedy for all his aches and pains, his causeless 



1 6 HOLIDAYS. 

anxieties, his asperities of temper, the gloom and 
despondency of his whole life, "to live upon a shil- 
ling a day and earn it," probed the rich man's ail- 
ments to their very depths, and prescribed the only 
cure for such imaginary distempers. Let Locuples 
work and be happy. Locuples has, nowadays, 
some notion of this, and so he works, as I have 
said, of his own free will, turning legislator, and 
magistrate, and poor-law guardian, and colonel of 
volunteers, and lecturing to Mechanics' Institutes, 
and writing books, and getting profitable place, if 
he can, in the great omnibus of the State. And 
what can be wiser ? For if there were no work for 
Locuples, there would be no holidays. 

And as there can be no holidays without work, 
so ought there to be no work without holidays; 
the one, indeed, is the natural complement of the 
other. Labor and rest, in fitting proportions, are 
the conditions of healthy life. This everybody 
knows and admits. But there is a poor, weak, 
cowardly feeling often lurking in men's minds, 
which will not suffer them honestly to believe and 
to declare that it is as much the duty of man to 
rest as to labor. We are wont, in a sneaking, con- 
temptible sort of way, to apologize for our holidays, 
as though they were no better than small sins, de- 
linquencies, aberrations, to be compounded for by 
additional labor and self-denial. But, rightly con- 
sidered, rest and amusement, or, in a word, holi- 
days, are a substantive part of the "whole duty of 



DUTY OF REST. 



17 



man;" and to neglect that duty, or to suffer others 
to neglect it, is no less a crime against our common 
manhood than to suffer our energies to run to waste 
in indifference and inaction, and to do nothing for 
ourselves or for mankind. Have we any right to 
over-eat ourselves, or to over-drink ourselves, or to 
over-anything-else ourselves? Then what right 
have we to overwork ourselves? " Moderate pas- 
sions," says an old writer, "are the best expressions 
of humanity." Let there be moderation, then, even 
in the passion for work. We must not wear out 
this mighty tabernacle of the human frame, and 
this godlike intellect of man, by an unseemly de- 
mand on their resources. A very old proverb is 
that about the bow which is always bent; but it is 
not so old that men in this generation do not some- 
times require to be reminded of it. The Chinese 
have another proverb to the effect that one day is 
as good as three, if you will only do the right 
thing at the right time. The Chinese are a wise 
people, and I hope that, when we go to war with 
them, we shall catch some of their wisdom. It is 
not the time that he bestows upon his work, but 
the system which he carries to it, and the energy 
which he infuses into it, that enable the workman 
to do his appointed business with success. 

I carry, to the best of my poor ability, these little 
fancies of mine into the practice of daily life. I 
work as hard as I can. My friends are pleased 
sometimes to say, very kindly, that they wonder I 



1 8 HOLIDAYS. 

contrive to get through so much work. My an- 
swer, when the remark is made in my own presence, 
most frequently is, that I do contrive it by playing 
as much as I can. I am getting on in years, and I 
speak more of the past than of the present. But 
man is never too old to play, by himself or by 
proxy; and the vicarious disportings of advancing 
age are not the least of the pleasures and privileges 
of man. If we cannot stand up at Lord's to the 
catapultian bowling of this generation, mindful as 
we are of the times when Mr. Budd, not, perhaps, 
without some pardonable feelings of vanity derived 
from a consciousness of the perfect anatomy of his 
lower limbs, kept wicket and "lobbed" at the oppo- 
site stumps, in nankeen shorts and pink silk stock- 
ings, — if we cannot venture to compete with the 
athletes of different communities, who now go in 
for astonishing broad jumps, and high jumps, and 
hurdle-races, and puttings and pickings-up of stones, 
at various places of gregarious resort, — we can at 
all events look on, and let our ashes sparkle up 
from contact with the fires of younger men ; and 
cry, Vixi puellis, etc., and live again in the energies 
of our boys. 

And if I take a holiday myself, whenever I can, 
without injury to others, I am no less minded to 
give the young people, who serve under me in the 
department of her Majesty's government to which 
I am honored by belonging, a holiday whenever 
they ask for it. I do not find that they take more 



RIFLE-PR A CTICE. 



19 



holidays, or that they do less work than others, 
because I am willing to suit their convenience in 
such matters, exhorting them, indeed, to go abroad 
when the sun shines, and to disport themselves in 
a clear atmosphere. I have one or two famous 
cricketers among my young gentlemen, of whose 
exploits I am reasonably proud; and I am more 
than reconciled for any little inconvenience to 
which I may be subjected in their absence, if I see 
a good score opposite to their names in the papers 
next day. There are new occasions for holidays 
creeping in from that great volunteer movement 
which is now energizing the land. And, surely, 
one would be wanting in a becoming sense of 
loyalty towards our Sovereign Lady the Queen, to 
grudge a holiday to a lusty youth desirous of per- 
fecting himself in the rifle-exercise, by which our 
enemies, if we have any, are to be grievously dis- 
comfited and overborne. I have heard it said that 
it is liable to abuse, and that rifle-practice may be 
a cover for worse practices, or a pretext for much 
unprofitable idling. And so is church-going, for 
the matter of that — and other excellent things, 
easily to be named — susceptible of this kind of 
abuse. But the primary reflection which this sug- 
gests to my mind is, that no one ought to need an 
excuse for taking a holiday. If society were rightly 
constituted, holidays in the abstract would be so 
respectable and so respected, that they could derive 
no additional gloss or dignity from any adven- 



20 HOLIDA VS. 

titious circumstance of rifle movement, or royal 
birthday, or that famous national institution, the 
great Derby race. I know no better reason for a 
holiday than that which we were wont to urge at 
school, namely, that it was a fine day, sometimes 
gaining our point by means of a Latin epistle, in 
prose or verse, to the doctor, with a good deal in 
it about Phoebus resplendens, aura mitis, and puen 
jocundi. I am afraid that such a plea would not 
be considered admissible in the school which I now 
attend. But I have often thought, when I have 
seen from my official windows the bright morning 
sun burnishing the Victoria Tower and "Big Ben," 
that, if I were head-master, I should like to 
summon my boys, and say to them, " Now, then, 
out into the country, and enjoy yourselves;" and 
to put a placard on the door, " Gone for a holiday 
— back to-morrow." 

It may be imputed to me, I know, by the 
enemies of holiday-making — whereof there are, I 
am afraid, thousands — that I am boasting only of 
giving holidays to servants not my own, — that I 
am lavish of other people's property. To this I 
am not minded to reply further than that I know 
what is best for her Majesty's service and for my 
own; and that in my own modest establishment 
the domestics are never denied a holiday when 
they ask for one, and often prompted to take one 
when they do not ask. It is a small matter for 
me to take my chop in Westminster on that day, 






MASTER AND SERVANT. 2 I 

or to carry some sandwiches to the office in my 
pocket, that I may forego the parade of dinner, 
and emancipate Mary, Jane, and Martha for a day 
at the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, — an institution 
which, as an aid, not to say an incentive, to 
holiday-making, I hold in the highest esteem. 
Are they never to breathe the fresh air or to see 
the green leaves, because I pay them a yearly 
wage of from twelve to twenty pounds, and have 
some covenants with them on the score of tea and 
sugar? Are holidays only for heads of families 
— masters or mistresses, as the case may be — and 
for the dumb animals who serve them ? There are 
those, I know, who think them sheer impertinences, 
and esteem it dire presumption in menials to ask 
for holidays, even to see their parents and their 
little brothers and sisters, a few miles off. Is the 
love of kindred to be denied to them no less than 
the love of nature? Can any one really hope to 
get good service out of reasonable beings by stifling 
their natural instincts and silencing the voice of 
their hearts? God be praised that there are some 
who think differently about obligations of this 
kind! There is my friend Loneyouchter, for 
example, the kindest of human beings, and one of 
the cleverest withal, who beat all his contempo- 
raries, of whom I was one, in his younger days, 
with such facility that it was only to be likened to 
the case of " Eclipse first, and the rest nowhere;" 
he told me, the other day, in his pleasant villa, on 



22 HO LID A VS. 

the summit of one of the Norwood hills, that he 
had given his servants " season-tickets" for the 
Crystal Palace. Whereupon, I honored the man, 
even more than I had done before. But mention- 
ing the circumstance soon afterwards to a fair young 
girl, she described it as a "mad freak." It appeared 
to me to be the sanest thing that had recently 
been brought to my notice. 

The sanest in all respects, — sanity itself, and 
the cause of sanity in others. For surely the mens 
sana in corpore sano is promoted by harmless 
entertainment of this kind; and health and cheer- 
fulness are the very foundation-stones of good 
service. If we think of nothing else but of getting 
the largest possible amount of yearly work out of 
a human machine, we must take care not to keep 
it in motion from morning to night for three 
hundred and sixty -five days in the year. It has 
often surprised me that men, who in their dealings 
with the brute creation have so clear an under- 
standing of this matter, should in their transactions 
with what horse-doctors somewhat disparagingly 
call "the human subject" exhibit so great a defi- 
ciency of common sense. Happening, a few weeks 
ago, to be traveling on the top of an omnibus 
bound for a railway -station in South Wales, I 
became the highly-interested auditor of an ani- 
mated conversation between the driver of that 
public conveyance and two or three decently- 
dressed men on the seat behind him, who might 



OUT TO GRASS. 



23 



have been small farmers or bailiffs. The subject 
of discourse was primarily the sale and purchase 
of a certain fast-trotting mare, very celebrated 
upon the road. The price given and the sums 
offered at different times for the accomplished 
animal having been well discussed, and having 
elicited an amount of private information "on the 
best possible authority," such as would have done 
no discredit to the discussion of an important 
historical question, the properties and qualifica- 
tions of the mare were brought under review. 
Hereupon some diversities of opinion arose; but 
there was wonderful agreement upon one point, 
namely, that the mare had been overworked, and 
that she must be turned out for a time to set her 
right on her legs again. Whether blistering would 
accomplish a perfect cure, or whether anything 
short of firing would do it, appeared to be an open 
question; but it was unanimously agreed that the 
holiday was the main thing. And from particulars, 
the company on the coach-top betook themselves 
to generals, and discoursed feelingly on the cruelty 
and folly of overworking a good horse, of keeping 
him always in harness, instead of turning him out 
sometimes to grass. To all of which I silently 
assented, for I remembered that I had once been 
"peccant in this kinde" myself, having ridden, in 
my younger and more thoughtless days, a willing 
horse to a remote railway-station and back again, 
a distance in all of some two-and-twenty miles, so 



24 



HO LID A VS. 



often without taking account of the strain upon 
the poor animal's system, that one day she sud- 
denly, when many miles from any help, broke out 
into a profuse sweat, drooped her head, and never 
recovered. She fairly broke down in the midst of 
her work; and I never think of the fact now with- 
out shame and humiliation. 

But I opine that it did me good, — that it taught 
me to think more seriously of my obligations to 
man and beast ; for I believe that I never offended 
after this fashion again. I sympathized from my 
heart with all that was said on the subject by the 
travelers on the Welsh omnibus, in the simple 
quadrupedal sense wherein they were fain to con- 
sider it ; but I wondered, at the same time, how it 
happens that, whilst the generality of mankind 
thoroughly understand the subject in this sense, 
there are so many able and amiable men unwilling 
or incompetent to apply the very obvious principle 
to the larger concerns of human life. It irks me 
to think that there are legions of excellent persons 
who would on no account overwork their horses, — 
who have a lively appreciation of the necessity of 
occasional weeks or months of rest, — who know 
that to grudge these periods of inactivity to their 
equine friends is, in proverbial phrase, " penny- 
wise and pound -foolish," — but who have neither 
the same tender consciences nor the same shrewd 
sense to aid them in their relations with those who 
carry them along the highways and byways of 



GRUDGINGS AND STINTINGS. 



25 



business and domestic life ; masters who refuse 
that to their human dependents, in house or office, 
which they grant willingly to the "beasts which 
perish." 

I had a friendly disputation on this subject the 
other day with my neighbor, Mr. Gallicap, a great 
Italian merchant in the city, a most worthy man, 
and the father of a very interesting family. I fear 
that I did not succeed in making him a convert to 
my views, but I know that I had the sympathies 
and best wishes of his sons and daughters, to say 
nothing of his amiable lady ; and I was greatly 
encouraged by the earnest, intelligent face of little 
Carry Gallicap, who sat by and listened to the dis- 
course with evident approbation of the sentiments 
I expressed. Indeed, I generally find that my 
younger auditors are heart and soul on my side. 
The argument employed upon the other was mainly 
that of the laudator temporis acti. There was not 
wont to be so much talk about holidays thirty or 
forty years ago. Young men went to their busi- 
ness early and returned late, — indeed, on foreign 
post-nights were often kept at their work till close 
upon midnight. If they were ill, they went home, 
and the heads of large houses were not wont to be 
illiberal to them. He had got on well enough in 
his younger days without holidays; why should he 
take them in his older ? Why should not his sons 
do as their father had done before them ? Why 
should they have shorter work-days, and fewer of 



26 HOLIDA VS. 

them, in the course of the year? And how was 
business to go on if every one went away? 

To this I observed, deferentially, that "every one" 
was a strong word. And I ventured to allude to 
the system in force at the public offices, which pro- 
vides for the continual presence of some efficient 
officer of a department, and yet enables every one 
to take his holiday at some time or other of the 
year, — a system which, as enabling juniors to feel 
their way to higher duties, has its uses in another 
sense. I alluded laughingly, too, to the famous 
saying of a certain great statesman, who alleged 
that he divided his business into three parts : — one 
part he did ; another did itself; and the third was 
not done at all. But I perceived that public offices 
and public men were not held of much account by 
my opponent, and that my argument gained little 
or nothing by a reference to them. Indeed, he was 
pleased to observe that if his firm had done busi- 
ness after the manner of the public offices it would 
have been bankrupt long ago, — a proposition which 
I did not dispute, but which I could not admit to 
be convincing against holidays. Indeed, nothing 
could ever convince me that it is not the duty of 
every employer, great and small, to give his work- 
men a reasonable number of holidays in every year. 

"And have they not," I may be asked, — "has 
not every workman in this Christian land fifty-two 
holidays in every year?" Truly, there is, for most 
of us, one holiday in every week, — one day, set 



SUNDA YS. 2 J 

apart by God, and given to man to keep it holy. 
It is the holiest of all holy days, — a blessed day of 
rest ; vouchsafed to us, apart from its spiritual uses, 
that we may recreate our exhausted energies. But 
" recreation," as it is popularly understood, is out of 
the category of orthodox things. Sunday is a day 
of routine, — the best of all possible routines, it is 
true, — but still we have our appointed duties ; and 
my idea of a holiday is that we should be emanci- 
pated from all routine; that we should have no 
appointed duties. Besides, who can really enjoy 
Sunday, when the ghastly image of Monday peers 
over its quiet shoulder ? 

We have come now to look upon the word, in 
its ordinary acceptation, as something distinct alto- 
gether from its etymological meaning, and are wont 
to associate it with ideas rather of a Bohemian or 
vagabondizing kind of life, than of anything sta- 
tionary and domestic. The right thing, indeed, is 
to " go out for a holiday ;" to seek change of scene, 
and change of air, and change of action ; to divest 
one's self of all the environments of work-day life ; 
to enter, as it were, into a new state of being, as 
does the grub when he eventuates into a butterfly 
and spreads his wings in the summer air. Grateful, 
indeed, ought this generation to be for the benig- 
nant aid of steam, which affords unfailing facilities 
to holiday-makers seeking change of scene and air, 
carrying them to remote places within an hour's 
space, and suffering them to see hundreds of miles 



28 HO LI DA VS. 

of country, in a single day, for a few shillings. It 
is no small thing that in these times a toil-worn 
artisan may transport himself from the stifling alley 
or the reeking court in which he lives, to the fresh, 
breezy coast of Brighton, for half a crown, and be 
carried home again for nothing. Or if he is not 
minded to go so far afield, there is the Crystal 
Palace at Sydenham, or the royal palace at 
Hampton Court, or the Rye House, famous in 
history for its plot, to all of which he may make 
pleasant excursions at a small charge, and travel 
out of himself as thoroughly as though he were 
new-born, going back into a past or onward into 
a future age, and forgetting all the wearing toil 
and carking anxiety of the present. There is 
nothing pleasanter than the sight of a railway- 
train freighted with excursionists outward-bound, 
all radiant with the expectation of a day's 
pleasure. And such may be seen nowadays in 
the outskirts of every large town on summer and 
autumn mornings; for London has no monopoly 
of such blessings. If the South has its Brighton, 
the North has its Scarborough; and, indeed, it is 
easy everywhere to rush out of the smoke. I hear 
people who can take their month's holiday when 
they like, and travel by express-trains, and get up 
extensive outfits for the occasion, with all sorts of 
elaborate contrivances suggestive of nothing less 
than an expedition into Central Africa, sneer at 
these excursions, as things snobbish; but it seems 






BLESSINGS OF STEAM. 



2 9 



to me that the sneerers are the real snobs, and that 
I have seen, in first-class carriages, extensively 
got-up holiday-makers of both sexes, far more 
vulgar, because more pretentious, than the poor 
little Pippas of the silk-mills treated by their 
admiring swains to half a crown's worth of fresh 
air and green leaves in the pleasant country. 
And a ripe, rich comfort ought it to be to all who 
get their holidays regularly every year, without let 
or hinderance, and, perhaps, without injury to them- 
selves and others, that the blessings which they 
enjoy are now within the reach of millions less 
favored by fortune than themselves. And I hope, 
too, that they who look up from the lower strata 
of society at people sleeker than themselves, in 
richer purple, and in finer linen, do not grudge 
them their holidays, and say, "What have they 
to do with such things? is not life all a holiday to 
them?" Indeed it is not, my friend. Purple and 
fine linen do not make holidays, any more than 
they make happiness. Let us rejoice in the enjoy- 
ments of each other. Let us shake hands over the 
blessed privilege of a few days' rest. Is it rest 
of body, or rest of mind? What matters! Bodily 
labor and mental labor both have their privi- 
leges, and both have their pains. Let us not envy 
— let us honor one another. If Hand goes to 
Rye House, and Head to Wiesbaden, for a holiday, 
let us hope that each is equally benefited by the 
change, and equally thankful for it. 



30 



HO LID A VS. 



If the real want, the need, of a holiday is to be 
measured by the enjoyment of it when it comes, I 
am sure that the upper ten thousand need it as 
much as any mechanics in the land. Belonging 
myself to the middle classes, I can answer for their 
appreciation, and I know that there is nothing 
keener. To dwellers in large towns, especially in 
this great overgrown Babylon of ours, there is a 
sense of enjoyment in the simple escape into the 
country, apart from the cessation of daily labor. 
How intensely are the first few days at the seaside 
enjoyed by all the members of a London family! 
I remember to have heard a dear little boy, some 
nine years old, on the green hillside of a Welsh 
watering-place, say to his father, as hand-in-hand 
they clomb the ascent, "Dear papa! this is so 
jolly, I can hardly believe it to be true." And papa 
responded heartily, as though he thought it with 
as much sincerity as his child. The first pink 
flush of air and exercise was on the little boy's 
delicate face, and his father's nose had already 
had a sunstroke (Why will Phcebus insist on 
assailing the noses of us Londoners before our 
cheeks?) such as is incidental to sudden exposure. 
It was plainly to be gathered, from the wideawake, 
the loose jacket, and the incipient moustache, that 
Paterfamilias was out for a month's holiday; but I 
was concerned to see, soon afterwards, that the 
month's holiday had like to be brought to a 
premature close by his injudicious temerity in 






VARIOUS CONDITIONS. 



31 



attempting to climb a rocky ascent by an insecure 
route, the surface of which, when midway to the 
summit, crumbled beneath his feet, and wellnigh 
precipitated him to the bottom. These are among 
the common incidents of the first days' holidays; 
we gain experience and caution as we advance. 

I should have been minded, if time and space 
had permitted, to lay down in this place some 
rules for holiday-makers; but the circumstances 
and conditions are so various that it would take 
rather a small volume than the page or two at my 
disposal to legislate for such numerous diversities. 
To one man the best conditions of a holiday 
are solitary traveling and perfect independence; 
another is fain to take with him wife and children, 
and all belongings; a third affects the companion- 
ship of a comrade or two, masculine and muscular, 
who can walk as many miles, smoke as many 
cigars, and drink as much Bass as himself. Jones 
takes a moor in Scotland; Johnson a preserve in 
Norfolk; Brown goes with Mrs. Brown and the 
little Browns to Scarborough; Robinson is off by 
himself into Wales, with a sketch-book in his 
pocket; and Jenkins departs with his young wife 
to the Rhineland, happy as a king. Much depends 
upon age, on health, on the bondage of our daily 
habits. Some eschew the "strenuous idleness" of 
holiday-making, and let the holiday take quiet 
possession of them. There are those who consider 
nothing so enjoyable as to spend a day in slippers, 



32 



HOLIDA YS. 



in their wonted homes, turning over their books, 
reading old letters and papers, sauntering into the 
garden, wondering at the flowers, nibbling at the 
fruit, — in short, resting thoroughly from labor, and 
never thinking what the next hour or the next day 

is to produce. For my own part, I well, no 

matter ; some holidays are better than others, but 
all holidays are good. 

I have had some grievous failures in my day — 
who has not ? But I am not in the least discour- 
aged by them. I went out for a walking tour in 
the Home Counties, and spent ten days looking 
out of the windows of bad hotels in fourth-rate 
towns, gazing at the inexhaustible rain. I shall 
never forget my visit to Llangollen, and the weather 
by which it was celebrated. I journeyed to the 
venerable cathedral-town of Salisbury, on a pil- 
grimage to my old school-house, and found an in- 
significant row of ten-pound cottages on its site. 
It was a sore disappointment to me, but there are 
always compensations. The march of time had 
not taken away the playing-field, in which we 
fought out desperate cricket-matches with the 
Town, recruited commonly with some of the best 
blood of the county. Nor had it taken away 
Keynes's nursery-gardens, now of world-wide repu- 
tation for their triumphs at rose-shows, nor the 
eternal "rings" of old Sarum, with theii cimlk and 
flint, their grassy banks, their yew-trees and snakes. 
Very pleasant to revisit these old haunts, but I 



FAILURES AND MISCHANCES. 



33 



would have given much, after long years spent on 
alien soil, again to traverse those old school-rooms 
and eating-halls and dormitories, where I wrote 
bad verses, and ate good beef, and slept soundly in 
my boyhood. My experiences are replete with 
mischances of this kind. Every holiday-maker 
must be prepared for them. What matter ? They 
are very disappointing whilst they last ; but we 
have our holidays all the same. When bad weather 
sets steadily in, we are wont to say that we might 
as well have stayed at home ; but we are ignorant 
and ungrateful when we say so. For, in truth, ab- 
stinence from work, liberation from the ordinary 
environments of daily life, familiarity with new 
sights and sounds, and the admission of new trains 
of thought, all confer upon us the benefits of a 
holiday, though the immediate enjoyment may be 
scant. We are better for it when we return. We 
may not be conscious of the gain, but it is no less 
certain. It finds us out years afterwards, and for 
every day of relaxation gives us another week or 
another month of work. Is there nothing in that, 
my friends ? I have seen the strongest frames sud- 
denly shattered, — the brightest intellects suddenly 
dimmed. And why? We know that God "rested" 
after his work; and shall human weakness dare 
to do without it ? It is said to be a great and noble 
thing 

"To scorn delights and live laborious days." 

But the line, despite its paternity, is altogether the 

3 



34 



HOLIDA YS. 



greatest braggart and impostor that I know. If we 
would live laborious days, we must not scorn de- 
lights. It is by taking a full measure of 

" Delight in little things, — 
The buoyant child surviving in the man," 

that we are enabled to do our appointed work. Let 
us all hold fast to this. Let us have our harmless 
delights ; let us have our rest ; let us have our holi- 
days. 

Yes : here is dear old August come upon us, 
with its ripe harvests and its riper holidays ; and 
let us welcome it with grateful hearts. You and I, 
dear reader, let us hope, have done seven months' 
good work this year ; and shall we not be prepared 
to do some more good work, by-and-by, when we 
have played a little ? 

It is time now to be packing up. Think well 
about this matter, my friends. Don't start in a 
hurry. Leave no neglected duties behind to stare 
at you, with grim spectral aspects, at odd quiet 
times, when there is a lull in the excitement of 
travel. Many a holiday has been spoiled by disturb- 
ing recollections of something that ought to have 
been done or provided for before the hour of de- 
parture. A day or two may be well spent, there- 
fore, in quiet, thoughtful preparation at home. Take 
your time about it, and go calmly. If you leave 
everything to the last moment and start in a fluster, 
your folly will be sure to find you out. 



CONSIDERATION FOR OTHERS. 



35 



I have further matter of discourse ; but I must 
lay down the pen, hopeful, however, that I may be 
heard again upon this or some cognate subject. 
My last word of advice to holiday-makers is, that 
they should never fail to remember that it is more 
blessed to give than to receive. If they would 
enjoy their own holidays thoroughly, and without 
any prickings of conscience, they must carry with 
them the pleasant reflection that, to the best of 
their ability, they have dispensed, and are prepared 
to dispense, the same blessed privilege to others. 
There are few of us, great or small, who have not 
in some measure the power of emancipating others. 
The little mouse in the fable, it will be remembered, 
released the great lion of the forest. The master is 
scarcely less dependent upon the servant for his 
holiday than the servant is upon the master. Let 
us all bear this in mind, and all help one another. 
A good, healthy feeling of this kind will do much 
to bridge over the awful chasm that yawns between 
the rich and the poor. Let us, then, encourage it 
to the utmost. This is the best advice an old 
fellow can give ; and with it he may well close, 
reverentially, his plea for Holidays. 

August, i860. 



WORK. 

HAVING lately discoursed upon Holidays, and, 
as I have been pleased to find, with good 
acceptance from some indulgent friends, I am 
minded, now that November has come round upon 
us, to take Work for my theme. Less alluring 
the present topic may be than its predecessor, but 
some delights may be gathered from it by those 
who seek them wisely; and there are few of us 
whom it does not concern. For, as I said of old, 
in other words, regard it properly, and Work is the 
substrate, or basis, of all our daily blessings, upon 
which lesser joys of divers kinds are built up by 
the Great Architect and Disposer; and without 
which there may be brief spasms and convulsions 
of excitement, which we may call pleasure, but no 
continuous happiness or content. 

Wherefore, thank God, praise God, O my 
friends, — ye who are born to work, and have work 
to do. There are few of us who may not find it 
when they will, and for those few we may weep 
tears of compassion. Not on those who deceive 
themselves and would deceive others into the be- 
lief that they cannot find work to do, because mis- 
guided by a false sense of the true dignitv of life 

(36) 



TRUE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 37 

and a false measure of their own capacity, — silly 
worldlings who would drive the coursers of the 
Sun, — they strive to soar aloft, when nature has 
granted to them only to creep ; — not on such vain 
tumors is our pity to be wasted. If they would 
consent to creep, they might creep nobly. All 
honest labor, be it the merest hand-work, brainless 
and mechanical drudgery, dignifies human life. 
Better is it to break stones or to turn a mangle 
than to do nothing. Good roads and clean linen 
are products of human industry which we need not 
be ashamed of having a hand in creating. Let us 
do the best we can If it be not permitted to us 
to do work of one kind, let us brace ourselves up 
for work of another. And to all of the great guild 
or brotherhood of workmen let us hold out a hand, 
— a hand of assistance, if need be ; anyhow, a hand 
of fellowship. If the work be of much account in 
the world's eye, let us be thankful ; if of little, let 
us be content. "All service ranks the same with 
God." — Let us rejoice that we are permitted to 
serve, whether at the council-board of the nation, 
at the head of a regiment of horse, or only behind 
a counter. 

This is not novel doctrine; yet it needs to be 
enforced at odd times, lest the truth of it should 
pass out of remembrance. Even as I write, a 
newspaper lies before me, in which there is a 
passage headed " Romantic Suicide," which relates 
how "a fine young man, named Arsene, lately 



38 WORK. 

hanged himself in his master's house, near Paris." 
His only quarrel with the world was that cruel fate 
had condemned him to be a grocer. He left behind 
him a memorandum, bewailing his hard lot, and 
beseeching his parents "to erect a simple tomb- 
stone to his memory, and to inscribe upon it these 
words — ' Born to be a man; died a grocer.' n Xow, 
the plain truth is that he was not born to be a 
man ; if he had been, he would have lived a grocer. 
The manliest thing that I know in this world is to 
do your duty in that state of life to which it has 
pleased God to call you ; and if you have been 
called to grocery, why not ? There are many call- 
ings without which the world could do better than 
without grocers. Strive, then, to be a good grocer. 
A good grocer is any day better than a bad poet. 
This silly Arsene, who hanged himself, wrote, " I 
remember to have read somewhere that a man 
should apply his intelligence to be useful to 
humanity, and as I see I shall never be fit for 
anything but to weigh cheese and dried plums, I 
have made up my mind to go to another world, 
which I have heard of, and see whether there may 
not be a place for me there." A place, doubtless ; 
according to the faith of the silly grocerling, a 
" Purgatory of Suicides," in which he will be con- 
demned to ceaseless plum-weighings, and out of 
which he will in no wise be suffered to escape, until 
he has subdued his soul to a right sense of the 
dignity of plum-weighing as an appointed duty. 



OUR DAILY WANTS. 39 

and of the utility of the calling to the world. 
"Useful to humanity"! Arsene! who is not 
useful, if you are not, Monsieur L'Epicier ? On my 
honor as a gentleman, I could no more write 
these lines, but for the early cup of coffee where- 
with I am refreshing myself in the quiet of the 
morning ere the house is astir, than I could pen 
another Iliad. And what if, my toilet accom- 
plished, I were to descend to the breakfast-room 
and find there no tea, and no sugar? — what of my 
equanimity for the rest of the day? Is it any- 
thing to me in this remote country town, in the 
neighborhood of which I am sojourning for awhile, 
that there are wise men and erudite scholars in the 
vicinity? I do not ask, and I do not care. If 
Solon were to be my next-door neighbor, or 
Socrates my fellow-lodger, what better should I be 
for the proximity of all their sapience? But it is 
everything to me that there is a good grocer in the 
High Street, — that my daily wants, though they be 
not many, and plums are not my especial frailty, 
are adequately supplied. " Not useful to humanity" ? 
I should like to know who are useful to humanity, 
if the grocer who keeps the shop in this little town, 
the assistant who weighs out the groceries, and the 
errand-boy who carries them to their several desti- 
nations, are not useful. Think of the panic in 
Castleton this morning if there were to be a gap 
in High Street, and " Figs — No. 9," with all his 
establishment and his stock-in-trade, were suddenly 



40 WORK. 

to be missing; we should then know how useful he 
has been to us all. 

It is, doubtless, in the remembrance of many, 
that among other wise things to be found in 
Mr. John Bunyan's popular volume is a description 
of Vain-Hope, the ferryman, who ferried Ignorance 
across the river. In a little doctrinal note, Mr. 
Bunyan sagaciously observes, " Vain-Hope ever 
dwells in the bosom of fools, and is ever ready 
to assist Ignorance!' Now, what is here said in 
a spiritual sense is true also in worldly matters. 
Vain-Hope is ever ready, with the oar in his 
hand, to ferry Ignorance across the river of life. 
And what shoals they encounter on the passage ! 
in what depths of mud they flounder on the banks ! 
It has always been so, more or less ; but it appears 
to me sometimes that this is an especial vice and 
danger of the age. We are, somehow or other, all 
of us waxed proud, and getting above our work ; 
and what is to become of generations beyond us, 
if we go on at this rate, it is impossible to conjec- 
ture. What is most wanted is a strong ebb-tide to 
send us back again to the status of our grandsires, 
and to give us more lowly thoughts. Young men 
in these times think that they have "a soul beyond 
the shop;" and old men, I am afraid, are too prone 
to encourage the mischievous idea, and to turn 
their sons, who might be good tradesmen, into 
indifferent members of some " gentlemanly profes- 
sion." But the gentlemanly professions are now 






STOOPING TO CONQUER. 41 

becoming so crowded and overstocked, and the 
difficulty of earning bare subsistence in them so 
increasingly great, that men of family and educa- 
tion are beginning to think whether they may not 
advantageously pick up for their sons the grocer's 
apron which young Figs has scornfully thrown 
aside, or the yard measure which Bombazine junior 
has broken across his knee.* I know some who 
would have done wisely had they thus stooped to 
conquer the great problem of the labor of life, — 
who, vainly looking for " gentlemanly" employ- 
ment for their children, and scorning meaner but 
honorable work, which would have profitably 
occupied their time and elevated their character, 
as a sense of honest work and manly independence 
ever must elevate it, have suffered them to hang 
about billiard-rooms and stable-yards, until the 
young " gentlemen" have developed into some- 
thing not much better than blacklegs and sharpers. 
Paterfamilias ! Paterfamilias ! think of this before 
'tis too late. When you and I were little boys, 
our mothers were v not too learned to recite to us 
the versicles of good Doctor Watts. They were of 
a good, homely, lasting quality, like our puerile 
corduroys ; and as Christian Years and Proverbial 
Philosophies were not in those days, we were 

* Since this was written, ten years ago, the good sense of the 
upper classes of English society, of the early developments of which 
I have here spoken, has more signally asserted itself. I have spoken 
incidentally of this in the essay on Toleration. (1870.) 



42 WORK. 

content with both the poetry and the morality of 
the doctor's lyrics. Neither you nor I can remem- 
ber the best passages in Tennyson's charming 
Idylls, delightedly as we read them last year. But 
our memory still clings, with grateful and affec- 
tionate tenacity, to the doctrine-freighted numbers 
which we lisped on the maternal knee. Many 
were the impressive truths which we learnt in those 
days, — truths often rendered doubly imposing to 
our dawning intelligence, by the striking facts in 
natural history (from bears and tigers down to busy 
bees) wherewith the poetical divine was wont to 
illustrate his metrical precepts ; but none more 
firmly implanted in our minds than the fact that 

" Satan finds some mischief still 
For idle hands to do." 

" Give your son a Bible and a calling," said 
another eminent divine. Write the words in letters 
of gold ! Any calling is better than none : there 
is nothing surer than that. You would like to see 
your Harry fairly started for the Woolsack, your 
little Cecil steaming up to the other bank of the 
great river where lies the archiepiscopal palace of 
Lambeth, and your blue-eyed Ernest floating 
calmly into the viceregal precincts of the Govern- 
ment House at Calcutta. Well, I have my Harry, 
and my Cecil, and my Ernest ; and I should like 
to see them, too, well ahead in the race for the 
Chancellor's wig, or the Primate's sleeves, or the 



HIGH AND LOW. 43 

portfolio of the Governor-General ; but I would 
sooner see them cutting planks in a saw-yard, or 
shouldering heavy luggage at a railway-station, 
than doing nothing, when they have come to a 
fitting age to do a good day's work for a good 
day's wage, and to earn their bread like honest 
gentlemen. 

There is nothing like it in human life, — nothing 
at the same time so ennobling and so exhilarating. 
It braces a man like cold water: it invigorates him 
like iron and quinine. What a poor creature he is 
who has no work to do ! — what a burden to himself 
and to others ! Many a man's happiness has been 
blasted by the possession of an estate, and, if in- 
dependence without work be a sore trouble, what 
must idleness be without independence ! For a 
thoroughly idle man, you must not look in the high 
places of the earth. Your great lords and landed 
proprietors have commonly work to do. The man- 
agement of a great estate, in spite of all interme- 
diate agency of lawyers and stewards and bailiffs, 
is no light matter to the owner, whatever we, who 
have neither lands, nor houses, nor fat beeves, and 
live from hand to mouth by hard brain-work, may 
think upon the subject. My Lord Duke disappears 
into his sanctum, like meaner men, every morning 
after breakfast, when you think that he might be 
playing billiards, or shooting pheasants, or riding 
to the hounds. He is as much encumbered with 
his riches as we are with our poverty. Of both 



44 



WORK. 



lots hard work is the condition. Moreover, it is no 
small thing to be a legislator, whether by birth- 
right or by election. Our laws are made, and our 
Public Service is presided over, by men of large 
estate, whether for the national good I know not, 
but assuredly for their own. And, indeed, when I 
come to think of the immense amount of harm 
that might be done by the thousand powerful 
noblemen and gentlemen whom our two Houses 
of Parliament gather up and absorb into the mass 
of laboring men, if they were left all the year 
round to their own devices, I can almost forgive 
the legislative errors and the administrative mis- 
carriages to which they are prone. What mischief 
would Satan find for the idle hands of men with 
so much money in their pockets ! Talk of wasted 
sessions, of unprofitable debates, of mighty deluges 
of words leading to nothing, and hint that Parlia- 
ment is of no use ! Of no use ! Is there any 
industrial school in the whole kingdom of half so 
much use? any reformatory so potential for good? 
Surely an institution for keeping our great lords 
and landed gentry out of mischief is not to be 
made light of by any benevolent mind. 

Large estates, in this sense, may be great bless- 
ings, as supplying work to the possessors; but 
small estates are commonly our bane. It is among 
the middle classes — the upper ranks of the middle 
classes — that men without work are mostly to be 
found. Say that a man is born to the possession 



LABORS OF THE RICH. 45 

of, or that in mature age he inherits, an income of 
two thousand pounds a year. You wish yourself 
that man. Well, — I must confess my weakness, — 
I have wished it scores of times myself. Cui bono? 
Though a goodly sum to earn, it is not much to 
spend; but it is sufficient to invite idleness. The 
daily bread being found, there is no necessity to 
toil for it ; so we eschew work if we are young, 
and we renounce work if we are old ; and we live 
upon our property, gentlemen at ease. "At ease"! 
It seems to be an easy life to live upon a property 
that manages itself, and to have nothing to do but 
to spend your few modest thousands. Ah ! but I 
have known men who have found it a very hard 
life ; men who have envied the bricklayer as he 
built up anew the chimney blown down by the 
wind, or the glazier as he repaired the lights of the 
green-house broken by the last night's hail; men 
who have looked wistfully at the mortar and the 
putty, and longed for a job of work on a larger and 
a manlier scale than their principal daily occupation 
of mending their children's toys. Well, it is better 
to have a glue-pot simmering at your study-fire 
than to have no implement of work within your 
reach. But who can doubt that the bricklayer and 
the glazier are happier than the "man of property" 
for whom they are doing those humble strokes of 
work? Better that he had been articled to his 
uncle the lawyer, or that his money were invested 
in some laborious and anxious business that would 



46 WORK. 

occupy his time and his thoughts; better anything 
that would give him a calling, than that he should 
dawdle out life as "a gentleman at large," so called, 
lucus a non luceudo, because he lives in the nar- 
rowest possible circle of life and has not a single 
enlarged idea to bless him. 

There are some who may accept these praises 
of work only in a qualified or conditional sense. 
Under all circumstances of health or sickness, joy 
or sorrow, to be compelled to work is often said 
to be a grievous necessity, and many kind souls 
are moved to compassion by the thought of it. 
But there is a vis medicatrix in work as there is in 
nothing else ; and most people owe more to it than 
they acknowledge, or even suspect. To me, it has 
always appeared to be the hardest necessity of all 
to work, when good health, and elastic spirits, and 
a general buoyancy of one's whole being, perpetu- 
ally suggest play. Let us be up and about ! The 
sun shines. The sky is clear. All nature is joc- 
und. The tingling life within us prompts us to 
active movement, and we are eager to disport our- 
selves in the air. We would ride or walk, play at 
cricket, shoot, fish, pull an oar on the river, — 
anything that will give freedom to our limbs and 
freshness to our cheeks. But — the work must be 
done. Oh, my friends, then it is that the necessity 
is truly grievous, then it is that the struggle be- 
tween inclination and duty rends the very soul of 
the workman. It is a terrible conflict, demanding 



IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH. 47 

all the courage and resistance of a strong man to 
lead him along the path of victory. I assume that 
the work is work that ought to be done, and can- 
not without injury be delayed ; else, these external 
invitations being but few in our ungenial climate, 
I might almost admit the wisdom of yielding to 
them. Does not God give us fine days that we, as 
well as the flowers and the harvest, may sun our- 
selves in them ? Are light, and air, and heaven's 
warmth, only for the nurslings of the field and the 
garden ? Are they not also for us, cradled inher- 
itors of the world's common blessings ? Truly, 
such obstinate questionings as these, when work 
would hold us down with an iron hand, are among 
our sorest temptations. It is hard to be chained 
to the desk — cabined, cribbed, confined within four 
dreary walls — when our hearts are throbbing and 
our limbs are twitching with desire to go far afield, 
and to " eat the air," as they phrase it in the em- 
phatic language of the East. Sound health and 
buoyant spirits and the yearning after out-of-doors 
recreation which they induce, are the real aggra- 
vations of work, the disturbing influences which 
make us sometimes deplore that we are workmen. 
But sickness and sorrow — how should we bear 
them, but for the work which we have to do? 
Writing of sickness, I shall not be understood to 
have in mind those mortal ailments which pros- 
trate body and soul, and render work an impossi- 
bility, but of the lesser infirmities of our nature. 



48 WORK. 

There are few really sound men among us. Sick- 
ness, in its less subduing form, is the common lot 
of us poor worldlings. But it is tolerable or in- 
tolerable just as we concern ourselves little or 
much about it. If we really knew the processes 
of derangement and decay which are going on 
within us, — if we could see all the several parts of 
our mortal machinery, and the disorders, organic 
or functional, which are impeding its right action, 
— verily the lives of many of us would be a long 
night of suffering and terror. There are pangs, 
and spasms, and tremors, and faintnesses, greater 
or less, afflicting us all day long. They all indi- 
cate some internal disorganization or disturbance ; 
and if we have nothing to do but to dwell upon 
them — if we are continually asking ourselves what 
they mean — we soon shrivel into invalids, and be- 
come what we think ourselves. A busy man takes 
no heed of these slight promptings of infirmity. 
He tells you, perhaps, when you ask him how he 
is, that he really does not know, — that he has had 
no time to consider. So much, indeed, has the 
mind to do with our merely physical sensations, 
that many a man will bear witness to the fact, that 
when some good-natured friend has told him that 
he " is not looking well," he has begun at once to 
be conscious of some disturbance of the system of 
which he had had no knowledge before. I have 
heard men, too, contend against the expediency of 
holidays, on the ground that they never feel as well 



TRIALS SOFTENED BY OCCUPATION. 49 

during the vacation as when they are actively at 
work. I do not deny the fact ; but I altogether 
dispute the inference. It does not follow that be- 
cause we are more conscious of our infirmities at 
such times, therefore the cessation of labor is not 
profitable both to body and mind. Besides, who 
knows that the very sensations which oppress us 
at such seasons are not so many indications of a 
restorative process going on within us ? Irritabil- 
ity is often a sign of a salutary reaction. Nature 
handles us a little roughly when she is setting us 
right. 

And, only with a slight variation of phraseology, 
all this might truthfully be said with respect to 
moral ailments and disturbances. As with the 
body, so with the mind. We take no account 
of small troubles when we have much strenuous 
work in hand; and even great trials are softened 
down to us by an absorbing occupation. Whether, 
rightly considered, this, so far as the greater trials 
are concerned, be on the whole good for us, may 
be open to doubt. 

" He who lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend. 
Eternity mourns that : 'tis a bad cure 
For life's worst ills to have no time to feel them."* 

This may be the higher philosophy. But, after all, 
we suffer more in the course of our lives from 

* Henry Taylor. 
4 



5o 



WORK. 



small troubles and disturbances which do us no 
good, than from the fiery trials which purify the 
soul. Against such lesser or imaginary grievances 
Work is verily a coat of mail ; and I am not sure 
that because it gives us strength to bear more 
grievous afflictions it therefore deprives them of 
their salutary, chastening effects. 

I know that there is such a thing as being 
" kept up by excitement" We do not know how 
we have torn and blistered our feet, till the toil- 
some journey is ended and we unloose the latchets 
of our shoes. There is a familiar story of a veteran 
cab-horse, that lived day and night in harness, 
because it had an awkward habit of dropping on 
its knees as the shafts were removed. There are 
men among us who live ever between the shafts, 
harnessed and braced up literally within an inch 
of their lives. Take them out of harness, and they 
drop. This is not a state of things to be tolerated, 
much less to be advocated. Very different are 
the conditions of healthy labor. There is no healthy 
labor without periods of rest. The insensibility 
to small troubles, which is a result of salutary 
work, is very different from the obliviousness of 
overwrought excitement. 

It was once, I believe, a popular theory that 
men who work hard grow prematurely old and die 
before their time. But, whatsoever the wont may 
have been when it was the custom of our fore- 
fathers to sustain hard work by hard drinking, I 



1 



PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF IDLENESS. 



51 



believe that, in this more temperate age, idle men 
run to seed more rapidly than their more laborious 
contemporaries. Such, at least, is my observation 
of life. With a keen perception of the different 
results wrought upon the physique of men by differ- 
ent conditions of life, I still do not find it easy to 
describe these distinctive differences. I think, 
however, it may be said, generally, that idle men 
acquire, as they advance in years, a flabby appear- 
ance, more indicative of age than the strong lines 
and the general aspect of tension which we see in 
those who have lived laborious days. There are 
men "who rot themselves at ease on Lethe's 
wharf," whilst their toiling and striving brethren 
are full of sap and vigor. This, at least, I know, 
that commerce with lofty themes, whilst it elevates 
the mind, gives freshness and juvenility to the 
countenance and buoyancy to the whole de- 
meanor. All work does not involve such com- 
merce; but the thoughts which arise out of the 
humblest calling — of honest work honestly done — 
are nobler than those which are associated only 
with our personal wants and our personal cares. 
And though the higher class of work be rare, it is 
still not to be omitted from such an essay as this, 
tjiat some of the busiest men whom I know, per- 
sonally or by fame, — the men who have worked 
hardest and done most, who have found life to be 
a battle, and have fought it the most strenuously, — 
are younger in their appearance, in their manner, 



52 



WORK. 



and in their feelings, than their contemporaries who 
have done nothing all their lives. I never doubt, 
when I see such men, that they have had wisdom 
to appreciate the small beatitudes of life; that' 
they have taken their holidays in due season, and 
never suffered it to pass out of their remembrance 
that there is a time to work and a time to play.* 
Half a century ago, as I have said, the pillar of 
statesmanship was the bottle. As the poor cast- 
away says, alas! even in these days, "there could 
be no bearing such a life but for the drink." Our 
great men drank, and they played, too ; but the play 
was hazard, and the play-room a stifling gambling- 
house, for which no milder name could be found 
than that which signifies the unquenchable fire of 
the doomed. But nowadays hard work in high 
places is ever suggestive of the wisdom of prac- 
tically recognizing the advantage of occasional 
interludes of pleasure. These are the harmless 
stimulants which keep men fresh and young, gay 
and joyous, even with the cares of a nation on their 
shoulders. Ay, these interludes! They are the 



* Some may, perhaps, here remind me of the well-known mot 
of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, who said that " Life would be 
endurable, but for its pleasures." In the sense in which he used 
the last word, there may have been truth in the saying. He was 
a hard and steady workman, alternating politics and literature in 
his daily life; but he died early, for he neither played nor rested 
— and " The pity of it — oh ! the pity of it !" Our generation has 
not seen many such men. — (1870.) 



INTERLUDES. 



53 



making of us all. What a word it is. Ludus inter 
laborem. Play between work. We do not all like 
the same games. You may choose rounders, per- 
haps, and I may vote for prisoner's base. I saw a 
game at the latter, the other day, on a smooth 
grassy bit of table-land among rocks on the W r elsh 
coast, which took five-and-thirty years off my life, 
as with keenest interest I watched the conflict. I 
don't care what it is. I am catholic in my sympa- 
thies. I have not been to the Derby since Bay 
Middleton's year; I did not quite see the glorious 
fight which lately agitated all the great wide world 
in which the English language is spoken, — though 
I confess that I was within an inch of it. But I am 
pleased when I hear that there are bets on the 
"double event" of a noble lord winning "the blue 
ribbon of the Turf" and gaining a decisive parlia- 
mentary majority in the same week; and I did not 
think much the worse of those legislators who were 
said to have taken the train to Farnham on that 
memorable April morning, though, doubtless, it 
is their business to make laws, and not to break 
them. 

It may be observed, too, of men of this class, 
who work hard and wear well, that they are com- 
monly fond of society, and not altogether indifferent 
to the pleasures of the table. And why not ? A 
man is not bound to be an anchorite or an ascetic 
because he has work to do. To be saturated and 
sodden, as in old times, with port or any other 



54 



WORK. 



wine, is a horrible state of existence ; but are we 
therefore to have no more cakes and ale ? Men 
cannot work, any more than animals, on spare 
diet. If you have a laborious occupation, whether 
it be bodily or mental, you must live well. I read 
sometimes in temperance tracts of careful and 
thrifty wives, who have persuaded their husbands 
out of beer, and have bought small cottages with 
the savings. I have as good a wife as any man, 
but I am convinced that the last thing in the world 
to which she would desire to lead me is the water- 
trough. There is nothing of which I have less 
doubt than that every kind of labor requires 
generous support. Some theorists have written or 
declaimed about animal food clogging or deadening 
the intellectual faculties. I do not ask you to 
gormandize, whether you have much or little to 
do. But you may be sure that intellectual labor 
demands good physical support even more than 
bodily work. Nature kindly tells you this. Have 
you not, I ask you, felt more hungry, after a good 
spell of work in your library, than after walking a 
dozen miles in the open air? Should you then 
feast on a salad ? I knew a man — an enthusiast in 
art — who declared that when he was in the throes 
of a great work he always lived on roasted apples. 
He died before his time. I suspect that the Tin- 
torettos of the present day fare better and live 
longer. Beefsteaks are better than roasted apples ; 
not that, like Fuseli, you may dream horrors, but 






IVOMANL Y SUPPOR T. 55 

that you may do your appointed work with less 
waste of human life.* 

To do your work well too, and to keep your 
mind fresh, you must diligently cultivate the affec- 
tions. In the society of women and of children 
there is more refreshment than in anything in the 
world. It is bright sunshine, and clear, "pure air, 
lovely sights and pleasant sounds; and if it cannot 
be said of it, as of nature, it " never did betray the 
heart that is its own," its betrayals are so few, that 
we need not take account of them. For my own 
part, I wonder how any one can work, who has not 
some one to love and some one to love him — 

" Some one to cast his glory on — to share 
His rapture with." 

* I remember the late Chief Baron Pollock telling me, at a 
dinner of the Royal Society Club, that when he was leader of the 
Northern Circuit he made a point of never going through a day in 
court without making a substantial luncheon. At a given time his 
steak or chop, with a pint of port, was ready for him at his lodgings 
or hotel, and if at his luncheon-hour a cause in which he was 
retained was coming on, he told his junior to occupy the court for 
a certain time, and at the end of it returned to take up the brief. 
He attributed not only his good health and his capacity for work, 
but much also of his professional success, to this habit; and he 
lived, active and laborious almost to the last, to the ripe age of 
eighty-six. He must have been almost, if not quite, an octogenarian 
when he told me this, and yet on that very day he had sat many 
hours in court before dinner, and after dinner he delivered a lecture 
before the Royal Society, with all the clearness and vivacity of a 
man in the prime of his life. — (1870.) 



56 WORK. 

Whether you have finished your great history in 
six volumes, or only filled the gaps in the squire's 
hedges, there is unspeakable solace and sustentation 
in the thought that the loving heart which has 
encouraged your labor rejoices in its completion. 
But apart from this wonderful stimulant of sym- 
pathy, there is nothing in the world that so takes a 
man out of himself and diverts his thoughts from 
the toils and cares of his daily life as the society of 
women, even though they know nothing and care 
nothing about his work. This has all been said a 
thousand, times before in prose and poetry, more 
eloquently and more forcibly than I could hope to 
say it, if I desired to make the most of the fact. I 
will only, therefore, observe here that it will com- 
monly be found that men avIio, in spite of much 
hard work, wear their years lightly, are men who 
delight in female society and are popular with the 
other sex. Very busy men, who can find time for 
nothing else, beyond the immediate range of their 
duties and responsibilities, are seldom too busy for 
recreation of this kind. Some of the most strenuous 
and most successful workmen of modern times have, 
I am afraid, been perilously given to intrigue. It 
is the most exciting of all amusements, and, there- 
fore, the one best suited to men whose public life 
is one of excitement. Bear well in mind, all ye 
who peruse this in the midst of the pleasant and 
virtuous family circle, that I merely state the fact, 
as I believe it to be; I do not justify or palliate 



SLEEP. 



57 



the practice. Happy the man to whom the domus 
el placens uxor are all-sufficient God be praised 
that there are such men, and among our brightest 
and bravest too! We will drop the subject of dan- 
gerous and exciting intrigue. It is a hard world, 
indeed, if it will not admit that there may be inno- 
cent friendship and companionship between the two 
sexes, though the female society, which lightens 
the burden of toil and smooths down the wrinkles 
of age, may not in all cases be that of wife and 
daughters. 

And not less necessary than pleasant recreation 
and cheering society is good sleep. If you are to 
work well, you must sleep well. If you are to keep 
your health and strength and youth, — to carry your 
powers of work with you to the last, — you must 
sedulously pay court to your pillow. It will 
commonly be found that the men who carry their 
years lightly are men who possess the faculty of 
sleeping at will. If you have much work to do, 
you must not account time spent in sleep to be 
time lost. It is time gained. It is an essential 
part of the duty of the day. I had once an old 
servant, who used to say, "Well, I have done my 
work. I have cleaned up; and now I'll get my 
sleeping done!' Sleeping was in her philosophy 
a thing to be done, — not a passive state, but an 
active part of her duty. And every workman 
should so consider it. Let him sleep in his bed, 
if he can, at proper hours of the night; if not, 



58 WORK. 

let him sleep at any odd time, when nature invites 
him to rest himself. If we do not play tricks with 
ourselves, if we work hard without overworking 
ourselves, sleep will rarely be coy tc us. As a 
general rule, it may be said that busy men are 
better sleepers than idlers, and that mental labor 
contributes more to sound sleep than bodily fatigue. 
I believe that only mere novices in work are kept 
awake by the thought of it. Experienced workmen 
acquire a habit of shaking off its environments 
when they will. If there be one thing in life 
for which I am profoundly thankful to the Giver of 
all good gifts, it is for the faculty of sleep. 

" I have two friends, who are with me night and day, — 
True friends and constant, ever by my side ; 
Than mother more devoted, or young bride — 
Yet when one comes, the other steals away; 
For jealous friends will no joint vigil keep ; — 
The one's great name is Work; the other's Sleep." 

It may be thought to be a condition of good 
hearty strenuous work, that the business to be done 
should be such as suits the especial tastes and 
qualifications of the workman. It is a sorry thing 
to work against the grain; the wrong way of the 
stuff, as housewives say; invito, Minerva, accord- 
ing to the scholars. But there is much to be 
observed in abatement of this, whereof I shall 
speak presently; being minded first to say that 
this evil is one which is very- apt to cure or to 



CHOICE OF WORK. 59 

neutralize itself. For men are prone, by very- 
force of nature, whatsoever may be their early 
diversions, to return to the path along which 
their inclination would lead them, and it will com- 
monly be found that, in the end, they are wedded 
to the work of their choice. Sometimes, it may 
fall out that, habit being, as saith the proverb, 
"a second nature," the workman becomes first 
reconciled to his work, and afterwards well affected 
towards it, simply by the force of habit and famil- 
iarity, and more than all by a growing competency 
to perform it with address. For seldom it is that 
we do not incline kindly towards that which we are 
conscious of being able to do readily and well. 
But the instances of the former mode of cure are, 
I esteem, more frequent: men forsaking the pro- 
fessions or trades to which they have been bound 
in youth by the will of their elders to follow others 
to which their natural tastes and appetences incline 
them. If there be truth in the proverb that "a 
rolling stone gathers no moss," it may be better 
philosophy to reconcile one's self to the unloved 
work; but "Man will break out, despite philoso- 
phy," and nature is often too strong for us. Whether 
it be more worldly wise in such cases of ill-assorted 
alliance to look the matter boldly in the face, to go 
into the Court of Divorce, and, making great sacri- 
fice thereby of apprentice-fees, and premia, and 
education-money, and years of early training and 
servitude, to make a fresh start in life, or to cling 



60 WORK. 

resolutely to the first uncongenial connection, and 
work on ill-mated to the last, is a question which 
may well perplex a philosopher. There is no rule 
to be derived from experience in such a case; for 
I have known men who have taken fresh starts, in 
mature years, make their way triumphantly to the 
goal of success, and I have known them too to 
break down, weak of limb and scant of breath, 
painfully and regretfully, on the way. It might, 
perhaps, have appeared, on closer inspection of 
these varying results, that in the one case the 
workman had been moved by an irrepressible in- 
stinct or appetence to embrace the new vocation, 
and in the other, by the instability and weakness 
of his nature, to forsake the old. And it is very 
certain that no such change should be lightly 
made; that we should examine ourselves carefully 
before we undertake it, and feel assured that it is 
not fickleness, or love of change, or want of perse- 
verance that impels us, but a genuine conviction 
that we have within us the elements of success in 
the new way of life, — that it is, in fact, our voca- 
tion or calling, — that it calls us irresistibly, and 
that we must go. 

Besides, I would have it to be understood, as I 
before suggested, that even the unwilling Minerva 
has favors of her own to dispense, — that there is 
compensation for the pains and penalties of work- 
ing against the grain. For there is surely no work 
so worthy, so ennobling, as that which is done by 



THE UNWILLING MINERVA. 6 1 

us painfully and laboriously under a strong sense 
of an abiding duty. There is a satisfaction in the 
feeling that we have done, to the best of our poor 
ability, certain work altogether foreign to our tastes 
and inclinations, — that we have striven manfully 
against our natural repugnance, and done the work 
assigned to us thoroughly and well, in spite of every 
temptation to half do it, or to leave it altogether 
undone. There is a satisfaction, I say, in such a 
feeling, not to be derived from the contemplation 
of more congenial labor; for there is small merit 
in doing thoroughly and well what it pleases us to 
do. Work done without strife, almost, indeed, 
without labor, is but a shadow or delusion of work. 
But to see a man sustained by a sense of duty, 
working painfully and laboriously, with indomitable 
perseverance, day after day, at that which to him 
is mere drudgery and task-work, is a sight fit for 
the gods. What merit is it that I write these 
pages ? Does it not please me to write them ? 
Is not my heart in the sport ? But what if I were 
to have spent this bright autumn day adding up 
column after column of abhorred figures, solely 
for duty's sake ? Would it not be a meritorious 
performance ? Should I not have reason to stroke 
my beard approvingly, and say, " Well done, thou 
good and faithful servant" ? Moreover, the smaller 
your pleasure in doing your work, the greater your 
pleasure in having done it. Like Byron's Tasso, 
I might in one case, my pleasant long-sustaining 



62 WORK. 

task being done, blot its final page with tears ; but 
in the other I should send up a grateful paean, 
shouting, "Joy, — joy forever! my task is done!" 
like Moore's Peri, and rapturously asking myself 
whether I am not happy. 

Whether you like it or not, my friend, go at 
it cheerfully. I know some men who are always 
sighing over their work, and over work, too, of 
their own election. They think they are hardly 
used in having so much to do, and are continually 
predicting that they will break down under it. It 
is a bad sign in a workman when he falls into a 
habit of predicting failures and disasters. In the 
course of the recent investigation into the circum- 
stances of that mysterious child-murder* which has 
struck so deep and tragic an interest into wellnigh 
every household in the country, one of the wit- 
nesses, a small farmer, was asked if he knew the 
meaning of the word " prediction." Confessing his 
ignorance, he excused himself on the ground that 
he had been at work since he was seven years old. 
He had been too busy all his life to trouble him- 
self about predictions. And I am always inclined 
to think, I hope not uncharitably, when I hear a 
man sighing over his work, and predicting that he 
will break down under it, that he really has not, 
and never has had, very much work to do. In the 

* The once notorious Road Murder — now no longer a mystery. 
-(1870.) 



TIME FOR WORK. 63 

same way, idle men who really do nothing — who 
have no calling, and perhaps not even a hobby — 
are continually pleading want of time. They are 
perfectly sincere when they tell you that they have 
" no time" for anything involving intellectual ex- 
ercise. They have come by force of habit to mis- 
take strenuous idleness for work, and the day is 
dawdled out, miserably* enough, before they have 
begun to take account of its hours. Busy men 
make time, whilst idle men are killing it, and re- 
frain from urging a plea which, in their case, would 
be a valid one, and accepted as such almost before 
it is offered. 

It is obvious that this matter of the employment 
and distribution of time is at the very bottom of 
the whole question of Work. There are four-and- 
twenty hours in every day, and the great problem 
of their distribution is one not easily to be solved. 
So various in its conditions and requirements is 
Work, that it is impossible, in a few sentences, to 
lay down any rules relating to the time that should 
be appropriated to and absorbed by it. There is 
hand-work and there is head-work; and in many 
trades and callings the question of time is settled 
by Act of Parliament, by official regulation, or even 
by social compact. Only recently one important 
section of the working world has been agitated by 
a question of nine or ten hours of toil to the labor- 
ing-man's days. There are some men whose work 
is never done, either because their calling is one 



64 WORK. 

which forbids limitation of hours, or because their 
minds are of so active, so restless a nature that they 
cannot suffer themselves to lie fallow. A medical 
practitioner, for example, can never call an hour of 
the day or of the night his own. Literary men, 
too, work at all hours, early and late : there is no 
limitation to the labors of the imagination. As 
long as there is a subject to be found, there is 
work to be done. But the larger number of work- 
men go forth every day after breakfast, and return 
before dinner or before supper, spending from six 
to ten hours at their apportioned work. From ten 
to four is the ordinary work-time at the public 
offices, from nine to five at private mercantile 
establishments, and from nine to seven, or still 
later, at shops, where the work to be done is not 
of a kind to make any serious inroads upon body 
or on brain. Much has been said recently about 
the tendency of the age towards overwork. Heaven 
knows that I would protest against the age, if I 
believed that such were its tendency. Excessive 
competition may generate such results. But I do 
not think that, generally speaking, we are over- 
worked. Perhaps what we want most is a little 
better distribution of our time. If I had the 
management of any number of men and women, 
and the disposal of their time, I would rather give 
them an extra hour's work every day, so as to 
afford them a half-holiday in the week, and a week 
or two's holiday in every year, than that they 



DISTRIBUTION 01-' WORK. 



65 



should go without their holidays. I am convinced 
that I should find, on the 31st of December, that I 
had gained some good work and that they had 
gained some good health by the arrangement. 

About the hour of the day at which head-work 
can most profitably be done there are varying 
opinions. The more common voice would seem to 
incline towards the dictum that "the morning is 
the best time for work," but I am not disposed to 
accept this as a general proposition. I speak, of 
course, of volunteer work, which is bound by no 
especial laws. The ordinary affairs of life must be 
transacted in business hours, according to the 
official chronologies of which I have spoken above; 
but I cannot help thinking that the work which 
makes the most noise in the world is not done in 
office-hours. Continual interruptions at that time 
make sustained head-work difficult, if not impos- 
sible. There are few men occupying an important 
position in an "office," public or private, who do 
not carry their work home with them, and perform 
that part of it which demands the most thought 
in the quietude of their own studies. Others do 
supplementary work, write books or articles, or 
solve mighty problems in science. Others again, 
having no official labors, choose their own time 
for literary labor or scientific research. To all of 
these, it must often have been a question whether 
it is better to work early or late. I have said that 
the general verdict is in favor of the former, — and, 
5 



66 WORK. 

on the whole, I think, rightly. If a man is blest 
with a regular occupation, demanding the mid-day 
period, he is necessitated to take his principal meal 
in the evening. If he works out of office-hours, he 
must work before breakfast or after dinner. To 
work after dinner, he must work late, by candle- 
light, at a time when he ought to be setting bed- 
wards. Young men may do this, but few men 
past forty can work after dinner. If you can work 
at all at night, one hour at that time may be worth 
any two in the morning. The house is hushed, 
the brain is clear, the distracting influences of the 
day are at an end. You have not to disturb your- 
self with thoughts of what you are about to do, or 
what you are about to suffer. You know that there 
is a gulf between you and the affairs of the outside 
world, almost like the chasm of death, and that you 
need not take thought of the morrow until the mor- 
row has come. I have heard it said that there are 
few really great thoughts, such as the world will 
not willingly let die, that have not been conceived 
under the quiet stars. It may be so. But it can 
be only mere assumption or conjecture. We do 
not know at what hour Bacon wrote his best- 
remembered works, or Shakspeare, or Locke. In 
those old pre-gaseous days, men rose early and 
set late. Still, we have from classic ages frequent 
references to the wasting of the midnight oil ; and 
we know that many recent writers have toiled into 
the small hours, after midnight, and thus pro- 






MORNING- WORK. 67 

duced the most brilliant and enduring children of 
their brains. 

Why, then, do I speak in praise of morning- 
work ? It has its inevitable drawbacks. That the 
brain is clearer then than at other times is the 
merest theory, propounded by those who have not 
worked early or late. It is a time, too, of expecta- 
tion: you feel that you are drifting into the cares 
and anxieties of the day, and it is difficult to dis- 
tract your mind from what is to come. Moreover, 
the before-breakfast period must always be brought 
to an abrupt close. With the inevitable eight o'clock 
come the postman and the hot water; and the dis- 
turbing business of the day has commenced. But 
at night you only drift into deeper silence and 
quicker inspiration. If the right mood is upon 
you, you write on; if not, your pillow awaits you. 
Why, then, I say, do I write in favor of early work ? 
Partly, because after-dinner labor is often physically 
impossible, and, when possible, sometimes detri- 
mental ; and, partly, because few men can call their 
evenings their own. The claims of society and of 
the family circle are not to be resisted. The evening 
hours are the social hours, and it is right that we 
should devote them to intercourse with our fellows. 
But we can always rely upon our mornings. No- 
body disputes with us the possession of them. 
And if we cannot do so much as at night, we are 
sure of being able to do something. For steady 
continuous work, commend me to these morning- 



68 WORK. 

hours. Spasmodic utterances of genius may scin- 
tillate best, like fireworks, in the darkness of the 
night; but the morning is the time for laborious 
investigation, — for all that is rightly to be called 
work. And if there were nothing else in favor of 
morning studies, there would be the paramount 
consideration that early hours are assuredly con- 
ducive to health, and, therefore, to the power of 
sustained application. The old couplet, learnt by 
all of us in the nursery, — 

" Early to bed and early to rise 
Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise," 

may not be strictly true, in a positive sense, else 
I should be rich instead of poor at this time, and 
wise instead of foolish; but in a comparative sense 
it may be, and, indeed, I feel it is, — for I should, 
doubtless, have been poorer and a greater fool if 
I had not been an early riser and an early worker. 
And as to health, can any one doubt the difference 
between the night-work and the morning-work? 
I speak alike of health of body and health of 
mind. There is not in the morning-work that un- 
natural excitement of the brain (too often aided 
by stimulants) which attends night-work ; and I 
am sure that no one who has tried the former will 
be slow to admit the infinite refreshment of those 
early hours, in the summer-time, before the sun is 
high in the heavens and the heats of the day have 






SELECTION OF WORKSHOPS. 69 

come upon us. Even in the winter, there is nothing 
that is not, under due arrangement, cheerful in the 
morning hours. In a few minutes, the gas may be 
all ablaze, and the fire may be bright on the hearth, 
and the water may be boiling, in an "setna," for 
the early tea or coffee that is to start us on our 
morning's work. But I need not add that early 
setting bedwards must precede this. We must 
lay our heads upon our pillows an hour or two 
before midnight, if we expect on rising to have 
before us — 

" The morning freshness and the welcome work, 
The aims, the objects, and the interests, 
Which make earth heaven, and man almost a God.'' 

And the place of our daily work is not less im- 
portant than the time. There are few, perhaps, 
who can select their own workshops ; but those 
who can I would strongly recommend to choose a 
room, in country or the suburbs, opening into a 
garden, or, next thing to it, commanding a view of 
trees or grass-land, pleasant and refreshing to the 
sight. It is no small thing to be able to lay down 
the pen for a few minutes, and to take a rush or 
saunter in the garden, breathing the fresh air and 
inhaling the perfume of the flowers;* and it is 

* Lord Macaulay told me that he had derived great benefit 
from his removal from the Albany to Campden Hill, where the 
library, in which he wrote, opened into a pleasant garden. It 
appeared to me to be the ne plus ultra of a literary workshop, and 
I have endeavored to imitate it on a very humble scale. 



;o 



WORK. 



good alike for the eye and the brain to look up 
from one's books and one's papers, to gaze abroad, 
even in London, on the beautiful foliage which 
may be seen there, in summer and autumn, in the 
parks or in the great squares, such as Lincoln's 
Inn Fields. 

A great deal of work may be done in little odd 
chinks and crevices of time, — spare half hours, 
of which many men take no account. I have not 
much faith in the story of the gentleman who 
wrote a great work on Jurisprudence at odd times, 
while he was waiting for his wife to go out with 
him. Jurisprudence is not exactly the subject to 
be treated of by snatches in this way. But much 
useful work, nevertheless, may come out of these 
little odds and ends, which we are wont to throw 
idly away. There are few who have not desultory 
work for desultory hours. Letters may be written, 
which otherwise would obtrude themselves upon us 
and break in upon our sustained labor. Notes may 
be made. Papers may be arranged. I know a man 
who devotes these fragments of time to the cor- 
rection of the press, and is seldom without a proof- 
sheet in his pocket. At all sorts of odd moments 
the pencil and the proof are produced : at railway- 
stations, waiting for the train; at hotels, waiting 
for dinner; on the deck of a steamer; in the wait- 
ing-room of a Minister; in all kinds of places, and 
in all possible circumstances, you may see him 
with a proof in his hand. It is a wise thing, too, 






IMPLEMENTS OF WORK. yi 

to carry about a note-book in one's pocket. Every 
public writer knows that he loses many of his best 
ideas, because they sprout up, unannounced and 
unexpected, at strange times, and are not stereo- 
typed on the memory. He should always have 
the means of writing at hand. I know some men 
who make copious notes on the backs of letters, 
on the margins of their Bradshaws, on the fly- 
leaves of their guide-books, — and forget them 
almost as soon as they are made. Scattered mem- 
oranda of this kind are sure not to turn up when 
they are wanted. But a recognized memorandum- 
book is an aide-de-camp never off duty: you may 
turn to it when you will. 

Indeed, small matter though it seem to be, I hold 
that every workman should look well to the imple- 
ments of his calling. There is a proverb which 
saith that "a bad workman complains of his tools." 
It may be so ; but good workmen work better with 
good tools. To those who wo' k with their hands, 
they are everything ; to those who work with their 
heads, they are of more account than may be sup- 
posed. "What are such gros. f material aids as 
these to the subtle agencies of ' he brain ? Is the 
flow of thought dependent up r n the flow of ink 
from the pen ?" I am not ashamed to answer that 
I think good pens, and good ink, and good paper 
are " material aids" in more senses than one. When 
the thick ink cakes in the pen, and the pen only 
scratches the fluffy paper, and your "fine Roman 



72 WORK. 

hand" is miserably transfigured into ungraceful 
and unintelligible hieroglyphics, is there no inter- 
ruption to the flow of your thoughts ? Do you 
never lose an idea whilst you are vainly endeavor- 
ing to embody it on paper ? Is the fecundity of 
your imagination never checked by the disturb- 
ance of your temper ? Is it nothing to work in 
ease and comfort, with all appliances and means 
to boot ? Is it nothing to have an easy-chair, and 
a spacious table, and a good expanse of carpet 
whereon to walk to and fro, between your throes 
of labor? Let no man despise these things. A 
good room in itself is no small matter. Work, 
when you can, with the window open. Let in as 
much fresh air as this treacherous climate will per- 
mit. Do not sit too long at a time. Have a high 
standing desk whereby you may vary your attitude 
of labor; and when you are busy, receive visitors 
standing, if you wish to get rid of them soon. 

And now I am reminded that something ought 
to be said about method in work. To be orderly 
and methodical is a great thing ; but I cannot help 
thinking that I might as well exhort my friends to 
be tall, or strong, or handsome, as to be orderly 
and methodical. Order and method are gifts, as 
beauty and genius are. I do not underrate their 
value, but I fear that they are not to be acquired. 
For thirty years I have been endeavoring to import 
something like method into my habits of business; 
but although time after time I have taken a fresh 



METHOD, 



73 



start, and resolutely determined to reform my old 
ways, I have ignominiously failed. I have not yet 
given up my efforts in this direction, but I feel that 
I might almost as well endeavor to be young again. 
I was bewailing this failure not long ago to a 
learned and thoughtful friend, who told me not to 
lament my deficiency ; " for," he said, " if you had 
this quality, you would not be the man you are : 
you would be deficient in others, which have been 
equally or perhaps more serviceable to you." And 
there is, doubtless, some consolation in this. Per- 
haps, then, I had better not strive any more to 
become what Nature has not made me. I may 
console myself by thinking that there may be a 
sort of method in the unmethodical. Indeed, it is 
often a fact, that what appears to another person 
to be a chaotic mass of papers, is perfectly intelli- 
gible to, and manageable by, the owner of them 
himself. And of all things the most hopelessly 
embarrassing to untidy men are attempts at tidi- 
ness, — their own or others'. I doubt whether such 
attempts at reformation are ever successful in the 
long run ; and I know that whilst the process is 
going on, the transition-state is infinitely worse 
than the old order of things. You may find what 
you want, in due time, amidst the chaos which 
masters of method regard with such dismay ; but 
if you put things away, in pursuit of method before 
you have attained it, the chances are that you never 
find them. There is no search so tedious — often so 



74 



WORK. 



hopeless — as a search after something which you 
have put in a " safe place." 

It comes, then, to this : there are different kinds 
of workmen, — workmen who create, and workmen 
who methodize and arrange. I do not here speak 
of internal arrangement, — the arrangement of the 
different parts of an intellectual work, — but of 
external or material order and arrangement. To 
arrange your ideas is one thing; to arrange your 
papers is another. Some of the best and most 
rapid workmen I know are, in respect of order 
of this kind, hopelessly deficient. That a great 
deal of valuable time is lost in this way must be 
admitted. Nothing is in its right place. Papers 
are not to be found when wanted. Work is done, 
and then mislaid ; and more time is spent in en- 
deavoring to find it than it would take to do it 
over again. But, after all, I am doubtful whether 
those who fold, and docket, and arrange, and have 
everything in such excellent order that they can 
find it at a moment's notice, do not spend more 
time in producing this state of things than the 
more careless workman loses by neglecting it. 
The men of order are seldom men of much creative 
genius. What they do, they do slowly ; and they 
are commonly of more use in helping the real 
workmen than in doing work of their own. It is 
well for us that there are men of both kinds in the 
world. Until the One Perfect Workman vouch- 
safes to His creatures a diversity of qualities, a 



MUTUAL AIDS. 75 

comprehensiveness of intelligence more nearly ap- 
proaching His own, we must help one another, 
looking to our neighbor, in all humility, to make 
good our own deficiencies and to do that wherein 
we fail* 

Yes, O friends and brother-workmen, we must 
help one another. We are all of one Guild: 
Full-Brain cannot do without Neat-Hand, any 
more than Neat-Hand can do without Full-Brain. 
What poor, weak, miserable creatures we are when 
we are left to ourselves ! We want assistance at 
every turn of the road ; at every quarter of an hour 
of the day. We think much of our own especial 
work, but how few, when we consider, are the 
things that we can do ! how many the things that 
we cannot! Is our own work better than other 
men's work? Is it more essential to the happiness 
of mankind? Does it keep the world agoing 
more than our neighbor's? Not it. That stout 
fellow who has just brought the heavy luggage 
from the railway-station — could I do that? Yet 
there is somebody — perhaps a whole family of 
somebodies — who cannot go to bed without that 
box. , Is there any one thus dependent upon me 
for his night's comfort or his morning's cleanli- 



* I have been reading lately, but I cannot at this moment recall 
the passage, that it was said by one distinguished personage of 
another, " He would have been the greatest man of his age, if he 
had only known the use of Red Tape." 



76 WORK. 

ness? Perhaps it is my privilege sometimes to be 
of use in my own way. If I work hard, I have a 
right to expect that reward, and to trust that I 
benefit some one. All true workmen are public 
benefactors. Let us not measure ourselves against 
others and ask who is greater, who less. The 
"toppling crags of duty" are before us all. Let us 
strive "with toil of heart, and knees, and hands" 
to scale them, so that we may be brought, with 
His good help, 

"close upon the shining table-lands 
To which our Lord himself is moon and sun." 

November, i860. 



SUCCESS. 

I HAVE a great opinion of successful men; and 
I am not ashamed to confess it. 
It was the fashion, some years ago, to sneer at 
Success, — nay, indeed, sometimes to revile it, as 
though it were an offense, or at best a pretentious 
humbug. This came out of the sudden inflation 
of some huge wind-bags, which as suddenly col- 
lapsed. To do honor to successful men was held 
to be arrant flunkeyism; for a successful man was 
accounted little better than a flatulent impostor. 
Clever men drew pictures of Success represented 
by a mighty Juggernaut passing triumphantly over 
the necks of thousands of prostrate worshipers. 
Still cleverer men wrote brilliant stories of modern 
life, illustrating the rise and fall of seemingly suc- 
cessful men ; and imitative dramatists transferred 
these sketches of society to the Stage. The great 
imposture of Success was the pet subject of the 
day. But a healthier social philosophy is now 
enthroned among us. We have begun to think 
that men who make their way to the front, be- 
coming rich or famous by the force of their per- 
sonal characters, must, after all, have something 
in them, though every now and then bubbles may 

(77) 



;8 SUCCESS. 

arise, in which solid realities are reflected, only to 
burst into thin air. Have we not all been reading 
lately about "Self-Help"? — and what has charmed 
us so much? Are not our assembly-rooms, and 
lecture-halls, and mechanics' institutions, all over 
the country, — I ask the question after a tolerably 
wide autumnal circuit of English provincial towns, 
— are they not thrilling night after night with 
popular orations on " Self-made Men," or, as I see 
it phrased at times, "Self-built Men," and all that 
relates to them ? To prostrate one's self before what 
Success has won, be it power, or riches, or what not, 
may rightly be called flunkeyism ; but to honor 
what has won success is worthy worship, not to be 
condemned or restrained. It is veneration for that 
type of manhood which most nearly approaches 
the divine, by reason of its creative energy. It is 
a good sign of the times that we appreciate it at 
its true worth. 

It is not to be expected, however, that envy 
should die out of the world ; and so long as there 
is envy, people will be found to talk about Luck. 
But Success does not come by chance; Providence 
helps those who help themselves. We may fancy 
that two men adopt the same means towards the 
attainment of the same end, and because one suc- 
ceeds and the other fails, we may say that the one 
is more fortunate than the other. But the one 
succeeds and the other fails, because they do not 
adopt the same means towards the same end. Of 



APPLICATION OF MEANS. yg 

the two pilgrims who started on their journey 
each with peas in his shoon, the one was not more 
fortunate than the other; he was simply more 
wise. The man who sank by the way, toil-worn 
and foot-sore, with drops of agony on his forehead, 
groaning with pain, may have been the better 
walker of the two. The race is not always to the 
swift, nor the battle to the strong. It is by the 
right application of your swiftness or your strength 
to the particular object in view that you make 
your way to Success. It is not only by doing the 
right thing, but by doing the right thing in the 
right way and at the right time, that we achieve 
the great triumphs of life. All this is to be dwelt 
on presently. It is only here to be said that the 
varying results which we discern are not attributa- 
ble to chance, not to external circumstances of any 
kind, but to inherent differences within ourselves. 
Whatsoever Envy or Vanity may say upon the 
subject, Success is a substantial and enduring 
reality; luck is a mere vapor that is speedily 
dissolved. "Wealth gotten by vanity," saith Solo- 
mon, "shall diminish; but he that gathereth by 
labor shall increase." 

But what, it may be asked, is Success ? and 
who is the successful man ? I have heard it said 
that "all success is comparative;" but with what 
is the comparison? Not with the successes of 
others. In this sense all success is positive. The 
prime minister is a greater man than his butler, but 



80 SUCCESS. ' 

he is not, therefore, a more successful one. You 
must measure the success of a man, not by the 
relation which his achievements bear to what 
others have achieved, but by their relation to what 
he himself has endeavored. If he has kept a cer- 
tain object steadily before him, and has attained it, 
— no matter what the object be, — he is a successful 
man. In another sense, too, Success is positive ; 
for it admits of no drawbacks or abatements beyond 
the range of the object attained. If I strive to amass 
wealth, and I amass it, I am not the less successful 
because my son turns out a dissolute spendthrift 
and my daughter disgraces herself by a runaway 
match. Am I less successful as a poet, or a painter, 
because my wife is unfaithful to me, and I am 
miserable in spite of my success? Success is one 
thing ; happiness is another. The boy Warren 
Hastings aimed at the Governor-Generalship of 
India and the recovery of his ancestral estates; 
was he less a successful man because, when he 
had accomplished these objects of his ambition, 
his life was embittered by the persecution of his 
enemies? And the boy Charles Metcalfe — he too 
aimed at the Governor-Generalship, and he attained 
not solely to that eminence, but to the prouder dis- 
tinction of ruling " the three greatest dependencies 
of the British Crown." Was he less successful be- 
cause, in the fullness of his fame, an excruciating 
bodily disease ate into his life and destroyed him 
by slow torture ? 



IT IS POSITIVE. 8 1 

Even the disappointments and disquietudes of 
Success itself do not detract from its completeness. 
A man may not find the attainment of his object 
so exhilarating as the pursuit of it; but for all 
this he does succeed. I knew a man whose desire 
it was to obtain a certain public situation. There 
was a particular post in a particular department 
which he coveted, and he said to himself that he 
would obtain it. Night after night his way home 
led him down Whitehall, and as he passed under 
the shadow of the building which held the depart- 
ment of government which he aspired to enter, he 
would shake his fist at it, and say, " You grim old 
pile, you exclude me now, but some day I shall 
have a home in you, be sure." And he was right. 
Unlikely as success appeared, he succeeded, and 
even sooner than he had hoped. It was nothing 
very great that he had obtained. But the success 
consisted in this, that what he won was the iden- 
tical thing which he aspired and endeavored to 
win. It is nothing to the point that other men 
had won much higher posts by their successful ex- 
ertions. Nor is it a matter to be considered, when 
we would determine the measure of his success, 
whether he was happier than before. There may 
have been distressing sets-off in other directions, 
or the thing for which he had striven may not 
have satisfied him; but the positive success was 
there. All success, indeed, is self-contained. If it 

6 



82 SUCCESS. 

were not, I am afraid that the catalogue of success- 
ful men might be printed on half a page. 

We may think about this at leisure. Vanitas 
vanitatum! It is not the subject of discourse which 
I have chosen for myself. And I would rather, if 
I digress at all, step aside to ask whether it may 
not be that we all have our successes,.though they 
be not of a kind of which the world takes any ac- 
count. I do not think that it would be difficult to 
show that failures have their compensations, and 
that oftentimes unsuccessful men profit in ways 
unknow r n to those who have achieved victories. 
There is a tendency to compassionate and to aid 
those who fall prostrate by the roadside, whilst 
those who stride on, conquering circumstances, 
are supposed to want neither pity nor help. Many 
a man has found the trade of being a " poor fel- 
low" extremely profitable. It is commonly some 
unsuccessful member of a family that inherits all 
the odds and ends of property belonging to bach- 
elor uncles and spinster aunts. " Poor fellow!" it 
is said, " he wants it so much; and he has been so 
attentive." Having nothing to do, or, at all events, 
doing nothing, he has abundant leisure to be " at- 
tentive," whilst the strider-on is perforce neglectful 
of those who lie out of his path. Now, this truly 
is a kind of success, though it be born of Failure, 
and though such successful men are not of the 
order of those of whom I said, at starting, that I 
have a high opinion. 



WITH WOMEN. 83 

I must keep, however, to the subject of recog- 
nized Success, as all men understand it, and inquire 
how it is attained. I have heard people laugh at 
the misquotation of that well-known Addisonian 
platitude, — 

" 'Tis not in mortals to command success, 
But I'll do more, Sempronius — I'll deserve it." 

But I have thought the varia lectio involved in the 
blunder deserving of the highest consideration; and 
I have been more disposed to admire than to ridi- 
cule the reading, — 

"'Tis not in mortals to deserve success, 
But I'll do more, Sempronius — I'll command it." 

More men have commanded success than have 
deserved it. There is nothing presumptuous in 
the idea. It is more presumptuous to talk about 
our deserts. What do the best of us deserve, but 
complete and disastrous failure ? 

It has been said that " any man may have any 
woman." The meaning of which I hold to be, that 
the persevering pursuit of any object must event- 
ually be crowned with success. Labor omnia vincit, 
as the copy-book text has it, and as the proverbs 
of wellnigh every country have it in other words. 
To set your mind resolutely upon the accomplish- 
ment of any purpose, is to go half-way to its attain- 
ment. Now, it commonly happens, to pursue the 



84 SUCCESS. 

illustration wherewith I commenced this passage, 
that they who are most successful with women are 
not the handsomest men. And the reason of this 
is obvious. Handsome men rely overmuch on 
their handsomeness. To use a metaphor rather 
expressive than eloquent, they expect that all the 
pretty women "will jump down their throats." 
But pretty women will not jump down their 
throats. This process of deglutition is not af- 
fected by them. They have no notion of being 
quietly absorbed. They must be won, — bravely, 
laboriously, and with a becoming sense of what is 
due to them. Are we to think that we have only to 
sit quietly in our easy-chairs and to twirl our mous- 
taches ? Beauty is a divine gift ; let whosoever 
possesses it be thankful. Madame de Stael, one 
of the most gifted of mortals, said that she would 
surrender all that she possessed in exchange for it. 
But Madame de Stael was a woman ; and I am 
now writing about men. Everybody knows that 
men care more about personal beauty in the other 
sex than women do, and for this reason, that pleas- 
ant sights and sweet sounds, and everything soft 
and gentle, are a delight and a refreshment to 
them. But the ordinary environments of women 
are soft and gentle. They lead comparatively 
passive lives ; and that which most fascinates them 
in the other sex is a sense of active power. What 
is softness and smoothness to them ? Bless them, 
they like the grit. Even the hard lines on a man's 






GENIUS AND ABILITY. 85 

face — the pallor, nay, the less interesting sallow- 
ness, of his cheek — are interesting to them, if they 
denote power. I repeat that personal beauty is a 
great gift, even to a man. But it is only as an ac- 
companiment to other gifts that it contributes to 
success. Everybody knows what Wilkes, the 
ugliest man in England, said to Townshend, the 
handsomest. And it was not a mere idle boast. 

And so it is with intellectual gifts of a high 
order. The conscious possessor relies too much 
upon them. Fortune is represented as a woman — 
do we not call her Dame Fortune ? — and she must 
be laboriously won. Are we to sit down by the 
wayside, and expect that she will seat herself on 
our lap? "Any man may have any woman," and 
any man may have anything, if he only goes about 
resolutely to attain it. But he must not trust too 
much to what he is. Genius, like beauty, is a di- 
vine gift ; let him who possesses it thank God with 
his whole heart; but it is not by being, but by 
doing, that we achieve success; and therefore it is 
that the most gifted, like the handsomest men, are 
often passed on the road by men of second-rate 
abilities, or, more correctly, of inferior natural gifts. 
I would have this distinction kept steadily in view, 
for people too often use the word "ability" with ref- 
erence to anything rather than to its true meaning. 
I am not one of those who have much faith in the 
general coexistence of inactivity with power. I 
hold that what men can do they will do ; and I 



86 SUCCESS. 

think it will be found that when they do it not, it 
is because they feel that they cannot do it. There 
may be great natural gifts resulting only in a 
dreamy, indolent, unproductive state of life. But 
this is because the possessor has no special apti- 
tude for any particular thing, — no vocation, so to 
speak ; no consciousness of ability to carry out any- 
thing to a conclusion ; no resolute will to attempt 
it. Dress up the idea as we may, cover it with 
whatsoever gloss of fine and attractive words, talk 
of the waywardness, the impulsiveness of genius, 
it is, in its naked reality, no more than this, — that 
whatsoever the natural gifts may be, their possessor 
lacks ability to do anything, and feels the inability 
within him. He does not see his way clearly to 
any definite result; he does not concentrate his 
powers on any given object; and he runs to waste, 
nothing better at the best than a splendid failure. 

To concentrate your powers on any given object 
— to go directly to the point, looking neither to the 
right nor to the left, and resolutely determining to 
succeed — is to secure success. If once you begin 
to sprawl, you are lost* I do not mean by this 

* I learnt this lesson very early in life, on the box of the North 
Devon coach, receiving the rudiments of my education as a Jehu. 
It was night. I drove from Andover to Blackwater ; and three 
elderly insides were ignorant of the danger to which they were 
exposed. "Keep them well together. Keep them well together. 
Don't let them sprawl," was all the advice I received from my 
instructor. The lesson was worth remembering on the great turn- 
pike-road of life. 



TRIB UTA RY A IDS. $y 

that we are to reject collateral aids. On the other 
hand, I would suffer all tributary streams to flow 
freely into the great main channel of your action. 
You may drive a dozen horses in the same chariot, 
if you can only keep them well together. You 
must converge to a center, not diverge from it. If 
I were to give way to the allurements of biogra- 
phical illustration, I should soon fill a volume, 
instead of only a few pages ; but here are a few 
lines from Plutarch, which I quote rather in the 
way of caution than of example: "There was in 
the whole city but one street in which Pericles was 
ever seen, the street which led to the market-place, 
and to the council-house. He declined all invita- 
tions to banquets, and all gay assemblies and 
company. During the whole period of his ad- 
ministration he never dined at the table of a 
friend." Emerson cites this with commendation 
in one of his lectures. But I cannot help thinking 
that it is a mistake. You should never forget the 
Market-place or the Council-house. But you may 
expediently dine at the table of a friend, or invite 
a friend to dine at your table, in the interests of 
the Market-place or the Council-house. You may 
often, in this way, make a greater stride on to 
success than by staying at home to post up a 
ledger, or to wade through a volume of statistics. 
Successful men, we may be sure, have not confined 
themselves to direct action, or looked only to im- 
mediate results. More failures are consummated 



88 SUCCESS. 

by want of faith and want of patience than by 
anything else in the world. We cannot grow rich 
by sowing mustard-seeds on a damp flannel, 
though they begin to sprout before our eyes. 
Concentration is not isolation or self-absorption. 
" Stick to your business, and your business will 
stick to you :" an excellent doctrine, doubtless ; 
but what if I stick to my business more closely 
by smoking a cigar in my back parlor than by 
serving customers in my front shop ? What if I 
put aside some important work, claiming my 
attention, to dress for dinner, and to convey 
myself to the table of an influential friend, on 
the chance of gaining more by going out than by 
staying at home? When I was a very young 
man, I wrote essays in illustration of what I then 
believed to be the folly of such a course. But as 
I grow old, every year convinces me more and 
more that social intercourse, of the right kind, 
is a material aid to success. Often the gain is 
palpable to you at once, and you count your ad- 
vantage as you take off your dress-coat. But, if 
not, it will find you out after many days : you have 
sown, and in due season you will reap. If you do 
nothing more than assert your individuality — 
make yourself a living presence among men, in- 
stead of a myth, a nominis umbra — you may be 
sure that you have done something. Am I more 
or less likely to read your book, or to buy your 
picture, or to say a good word for you, if I have a 



SINGLENESS OF AIM. 



89 



chance, to some man in authority, for sitting next 
to you at our friend Robinson's and thinking you 
a pleasant fellow? At all stages of your journey 
it will be the same. It is not more incumbent 
upon you to remember this, that you may gain 
a high place, than that you may keep it. Our 
statesmen are wiser in their generation than 
Pericles. There is Lord Tiverton, the very per- 
sonification of smiling success. Does he "decline 
all invitations to banquets, all gay assemblies, all 
company"? » 

Now, all this does not in any way militate 
against the theory of concentration. In a work of 
art there may be great variety of detail with perfect 
unity of aim. Every accessory should contribute 
to the one general result,— should illustrate the 
one leading idea. Every detail that is foreign to 
the subject is so much sheer waste of strength. 
And so it is in the conduct of life. With one 
object set steadily before us, we may have many 
varying activities, but they will all assist the main 
action, and impart strength and consistency to it. 
Singleness of aim, I repeat it-, in nowise demands 
monotony of action. But if you allow yourself to 
be diverted from this singleness of object, you are 
little likely to succeed in life. " Art is long — life 
is short." Knowing this, there is an universal 
tendency among us to go in search of specialties. 
General practitioners seldom get beyond a respect- 
able mediocrity, whilst your specialists attain to 



9 o 



SUCCESS. 



eminence and wealth. If an eye or an ear be 
affected, we seek out the man who has made that 
particular organ the study of his life. In the pur- 
suit of that one object, the oculist or the aurist 
may have studied the mechanism of the whole 
human frame, and the general physiology of man, 
but only in their relation to the particular organ to 
the full understanding of which he is devoting all 
the energies of his mind. He cannot, indeed, 
understand his subject without the aid of this 
contributory knowledge. But all that is not con- 
tributory is waste. In the same manner, lawyers 
succeed by studying special branches of their pro- 
fession ; and literary men are successful in propor- 
tion as they stick to their specialties, or rather as 
they are fortunate in having any. If a man can 
write well on any one special subject — no matter 
what that subject may be — he is sure to find profit- 
able occupation for his pen, whilst the general 
dealer in literary wares, though more highly gifted 
by nature, may fail to provide himself with bread. 
The popular appreciation of this general fact ex- 
presses itself in the well-known proverb that u a 
jack-of-all-trades is master of none." The world 
has no faith in Admirable Crichtons. They may 
be very pleasant fellows in their way, but mankind 
in general would rather not do business with them. 
A shrewd, intelligent man of the world, and one, 
too, who had been eminently successful, — for from 
a small beginning he had risen to the highest place 



O VER-SENSITIVENESS. 



91 



in the department to which he had been attached, 
and had made the fortunes of his whole family, 
brothers, sons, and nephews, as well as his own, — 
once said to me, "The longer I live, the more con- 
vinced I am that over-sensitiveness is a great mis- 
take in a public man." He might have said, in all 
men who desire to succeed in life. Now, I wish 
it to be understood that what is expressed here by 
the word " over-sensitiveness" does not signify 
over-scrupulousness. Be as scrupulous as you 
will. Do nothing that can give you a single pang 
of conscience. Keep your hands clean. If you 
cannot do this, and succeed, sink into the abysmal 
depths of failure, unsoiled and unspotted, with 
skin clear and white as a little child's. But do not 
be over-sensitive on the score of pride, or vanity, 
or dominant egotism. Every successful man, you 
may be sure, has had much to mortify him in the 
course of his career. He has borne many rebuffs; 
he has sustained many failures. What if men do 
not understand you, are not inclined to encourage 
you, and exercise the privilege of age or superior 
position? — bear with it all, Juvenis, your time will 
come ; you may take your change out of the world 
when you are a little older. Bah ! how does it 
hurt you ? " Hard words break no bones," saith 
the proverb. And they break no spirit that is not 
of the feeblest. The world may laugh at your fail- 
ures : — what then ? Try again, and perhaps they 
will not laugh. Try once again, and perhaps it 



9 2 



SUCCESS. 



will be your turn to laugh. " He who wins may 
laugh," saith another proverb. If you have the 
right stuff in you, you will not be put down. 
There is a man now among us, a man of genius, 
who aspired to take a part in public affairs. After 
much travail, he obtained a seat in Parliament. 
And the House, knowing he could write, assumed 
that he could not speak, and when he rose they 
laughed at and hooted him. He told his assail- 
ants that the time would come when they would 
listen to him ; and he was right. He spoke the 
words of prophecy and of truth. And the time did 
come when they not only listened, but when the 
men who had despised came to fear him, or to 
worship him, and, when he rose, either shrank ap- 
palled and dismayed, or looked to him for the 
salvation of their party and applauded to the echo. 
There are various roads to Success, but I am 
somewhat inclined to think that the surest is 
gravelly and gritty, with some awkward pitfalls 
and blinding quicksets in the way. Was that 
famous nursery rhyme of the Man of Thessaly, 
think you, written but for the entertainment of 
babes and sucklings ? or was it not rather meant 
as a lesson to children of a larger growth, to the 
adolescents of our nurseries of learning, starting on 
the great journey of life ? Every one knows the 
story, — how the hero of it 



"jumped into a quickset hedge 
And scratched out both his eyes." 






FIRST FAILURES. 93 

Doubtless, the way with most of us, — looking not 
before we leap; going ahead too rapidly at the 
outset; not calculating our juvenile strength, and 
jumping into the midst of what we think we can 
clear at a bound. Do we not all think ourselves 
"wondrous wise," and, thinking so, encounter 
blinding disaster? But are we, therefore, to go 
darkling all the rest of our lives ? It was not to 
teach us this that the great epic of the Man of 
Thessaly was written. He had the true heroic 
stuff in him; and he did not sit down and bewail 
his loss, helpless and hopeless. 

" And when he saw his eyes were out, 
He had reason to complain ; 
But he jumped into the quickset hedge, 
And scratched them in again."* 

And such is the right way to fight the battle of 
life, to grapple with the failures and disasters which 

*I write the words as I learnt them in my childhood; but 
there are various readings of all (so-called) nursery rhymes, and 
I am told that more correctly the concluding portion of the legend 
of the Man of Thessaly runs thus : — 

" But when he saw his eyes were out, 
With all his might and main, 
He jumped into the quickset hedge, 
And scratched them in again." 

This reading is more emphatic than the other, and better illustrates 
my text. It is by going at it again, " with all one's might and 
main," that we repair our foregone disasters and gather strength 
from defeat. 



94 SUCCESS. 

beset your career. Go at it again ! You may have 
reason to complain that your good intentions meet 
with no better results ; that the singleness of your 
aims, the purity of your aspirations, and the high 
courage of your first grand plunge into life, led to 
nothing but a torn face, smeared with blood, and a 
night of painful bewildering blindness. But it is 
better to strive manfully than to complain weakly; 
brace yourself up for another plunge; gather 
strength from defeat; into the quickset hedge 
again gallantly; and you will recover all that you 
have lost, scratch your eyes in again, and never lose 
your clearness of vision for the rest of your life. 

Yes, indeed, if we have the right stuff in us, 
these failures at the outset are grand materials 
of success. To the feeble they are, of course, 
stumbling-blocks. The wretched weakling goes 
no farther; he lags behind, and subsides into a 
life of failure. And so by this winnowing process 
the number of the athletes in the great Olympics 
of life is restricted to a few, and there is clear 
space in the arena. There is scarcely an old man 
among us — an old and successful man — who will 
not willingly admit that he was made by his 
failures, and that what he once thought his hard 
fate was in reality his good fortune. And thou, 
my bright-faced, bright-witted child, who thinkest 
that thou canst carry Parnassus by storm, learn to 
possess thyself in patience. Not easy the lesson, 
I know; not cheering the knowledge that success 



FIRST FAILURES. 95 

is not attainable, per saltum, by a hop-step-and- 
a-jump, but by arduous passages of gallant per- 
severance, toilsome efforts long sustained, and, 
most of all, by repeated failures. Hard, I know, 
is that last word, grating harshly upon the ear of 
youth. Say, then, that we mollify it a little, — that 
we strip it of its outer crustaceousness and asper- 
ity; and truthfully may we do so, my dear. For 
these failures are, as I have said, but stepping- 
stones to success; gradus ad Parnassiun, — at the 
worst, non-attainments of the desired end before 
thy time. If success were to crown thine efforts 
now, where would be the great success of the here- 
after? It is the brave resolution to "do better 
next time" that lays the substrate of all real great- 
ness. Many a promising reputation has been pre- 
maturely destroyed by early success. The good 
sap runs out from the trunk into feeble offshoots 
or suckers. The hard discipline of the knife is 
wanted. I repeat that it is not pleasant ; but when 
thou feelest the sharpness of the edge, think that 
all who have gone before thee have been lacerated 
in like manner. At thine age I went through it all. 
My first great effort was a tragedy upon a grand 
Elizabethan model. It was submitted by a friend 
to a competent critic, who pronounced it to be 
"morally, dramatically, and irremediably bad." I 
write the words now with a strong sense of grati- 
tude to that critic ; but I have not forgotten the 
keen agony with which they burnt themselves into 



96 SUCCESS. 

my soul, when I first read the crushing verdict in 
a dingy back bedroom in the Hummums. We 
have all gone through it, my dear. We! "How 
we apples swim !" I would speak of men — the 
real Chivalry of letters — whose bucklers I am 
not worthy to bear. Ask them about their early 
struggles with a world incredulous of their genius, 
and what a history they will have to tell thee! 
Ay, and what a grand moral! Is there a true 
knight among them who does not, on the very 
knees of his heart, thank God for his early 
failures? 

In estimating the sources of Success, account 
must, doubtless, be taken of constitution. Some 
of us have constitutional defects by which others 
are not incapacitated or impeded. Sustained 
energy is possessed only by those who have 
powerful digestive organs. Men of a bilious, 
sanguine, irritable nature are capable of great 
spasms of energy, which carry them along so far 
at a time that they can allow for intervals of pros- 
tration. But there is nothing like a steady flow 
of health, — art equable robustness of manhood. 
It is a blessing which few men possess, and for 
which the possessor has reason devoutly to be 
thankful. Most of us are sensible of intervals of 
feebleness and weariness, when we are incapable of 
any great exertion, when we feel painfully that 
we are not doing the work which we had set our- 
selves to do, that we are falling behind in the 



THE FRAIL FLESH. 



97 



race, and suffering day after day to slip by with- 
out our making any impression on the sand. 
For some time, I doubted much as to the best 
mode of dealing with Nature in such a case, — 
whether it were better to make the dominant will 
assert itself, and to go on in spite of the unwilling- 
ness of the natural man, in spite of weakness, and 
lassitude, and continual entreaties from the frail 
flesh ; or to let Nature have her way at once, and 
succumb contentedly to her demands. On the one 
hand, there is the fear of doing your work badly, — 
perhaps of having it to do all over again, — or of 
making on the minds of others, whom you wish to 
influence favorably, an impression of feebleness 
rather than of strength. There is, moreover, the 
risk of extending the period of lassitude and in- 
competency by doing violence to Nature ; per- 
haps, indeed, of permanently enfeebling your 
powers. On the other hand, there is the danger 
of making compromises with your active powers, 
and yielding to the temptations of indolence. We 
may mistake idleness for inability, and follow our 
self-indulgent inclinations, rather than be swayed 
by an honest sense of what is wisest and most 
befitting the occasion. It is difficult to lay down 
any precise rules on the subject for the guidance 
of others. If every man asks himself what is his 
besetting infirmity, and answers the question con- 
scientiously, he will be able to decide whether he 
runs greater risk of injuriously forcing Nature, or 

7 



9 8 SUCCESS. 

of yielding' too readily to her suggestions. If you 
know that you are not indolent, — if you have, for 
the most part, pleasure in your work, and never 
need the spur, — you may safely pause, when your 
energies are flagging and you feel an indescribable 
something that resists all your efforts to go forward 
on the road. It is better not to do a thing at all 
than to do it badly. You may lose time. What 
then ? Men, stripping for the race of life, should 
account no time or money thrown away that con- 
tributes in any way to their physical health, — that 
imparts tone to the stomach, or strength to the 
nerves. And we should never forget that we do not 
sustain our energies best by keeping them always 
on the stretch. Rest and recreation are no small 
parts of discipline. The greater the work before 
us, the more need we have of them both. 

I am nearing, not the end of my subject, but 
the end of my space, and I see before me much 
which I had purposed to say, but which must be 
left unsaid, for such a theme is not easily ex- 
hausted. But there is one matter to which, before 
I conclude, I especially desire to invite attention. 
I have heard it said that if we expect to get on 
in the world we must be suspicious of our neigh- 
bors. " Treat every man as if he were a rogue." 
Now, if this were a condition of Success, Success 
would not be worth having, — nay, indeed, it would 
be wholly intolerable: commend me to a life of 
failure. But it is not a condition of Success. To 



FAITH. 99 

know an honest man from a rogue, and to act 
accordingly, is doubtless a great thing ; but, if we 
are to treat all mankind on our journey through 
life as rogues or as honest men, why, I throw up 
my cap for the latter. We may be cheated, it is 
true, tricked, cozened, defrauded, and we may 
throw away that which worthily bestowed might 
have really contributed to our success. It is a 
serious matter to waste our strength, — to squander, 
in this manner, the materials of Success. Suc- 
cessful men, it may be said, do not make blunders 
of this kind. I am not quite sure of that; besides, 
who knows but that the strength may not be wasted 
after all? A good deed done in a good spirit can 
never be. thrown away. The bread cast upon the 
waters may return to us after many days. This at 
least I know, that if it be true, as I have said, that 
Providence helps those who help themselves, it is 
no less true that Providence helps those who help 
others. " The liberal deviseth liberal things, and 
by his liberality shall he stand." It was not 
meant that we should stand alone in the world. 
Whatsoever may be our strength, whatsoever our 
self-reliance, there are times and seasons when we 
need a helping hand; and how can we expect it to 
be stretched out to us, if we always keep our own 
in our pockets ? And if we do not trust others, 
how can we hope to be trusted ourselves ? I am 
not writing now about high motives, but about aids 
to Success. Still, I would have it borne in remem- 



100 SUCCESS. 

brance that there is a vast difference between look- 
ing for an immediate or direct return for every 
kindness done to a neighbor, and having faith in 
the assurance of Providence that as we mete to 
others so shall it be meted to us. The recipient 
of our bounty may turn his back upon us and go 
forth into the world only to revile us ; but it does 
not follow therefore that we have wasted our 
generosity, or that the next shipwrecked brother 
who comes to us should be sent empty-handed 
away. Let us only have faith and patience, and 
we shall find our reward. Doubtless there may be 
exceptions, — apparent, if not real ; but my experi- 
ence of life teaches me that men who are prone 
to assist others commonly thrive well themselves. 
The most successful men of my acquaintance are 
at the same time the most liberal. Their system 
is to treat their neighbor as an honest man until 
their commerce with him has proved that he is a 
rogue; and I do not think that men are less likely 
to be honest for finding that they are trusted by 
their neighbors. 

This matter of mutual aid is a point much to be 
considered. Self-reliance is a great thing, but it 
may sometimes carry us out of our depths. Suc- 
cessful men are commonly as ready to be helped 
by, as to help, others. They know how to turn 
inferior agency to good account. After all, that 
which any man can do by himself is very little. 
You must turn the energies of other men to ac- 



SELFISHNESS. IO i 

count in furtherance of your own. The right thing 
is to identify their interests with yours, and not 
only to make them believe that by helping you 
they are helping themselves, but really to insure 
that it is so. My belief is that selfish men do not 
succeed in life. Selfishness is essentially suicidal. 
You know instances to the contrary, you say. Are 
you sure of it ? Appearances are sometimes de- 
ceitful. There are men who bear the appearance 
of selfishness, — who are harsh in manner, stern of 
purpose, seemingly inaccessible and unyielding, — 
but there are soft spots under the grit. They do 
things differently from men of a more genial tem- 
perament. But what right have we to expect that 
every one should wear our colors ? Stern men are 
not necessarily selfish men. There are men who, 
conscious of the excessive softness of their natures, 
have felt the necessity of induing a sort of outer 
crust or armor of asperity, as a covering or pro- 
tection for themselves, and who thus, in their 
efforts to counteract a tenderness approaching to 
weakness, do manifest injustice to the goodness of 
their hearts. I have known men, too, noted for an 
almost impenetrable reserve, who were in reality 
thus reserved .only because no one invited their 
confidences. The injudicious bearing of those with 
whom they lived had brought them to this pass. 
The respect and deference of inferiors, whether of 
the family or only of the household, if in excess, 
will often produce this result. Reticence begets 



102 SUCCESS. 

reticence. But men of this kind often long for an 
opportunity of letting loose their pent-up confi- 
dences, and, if you only touch the right spring, 
will raise at once the lid of their reserve, and show 
you all the inner mechanism of their hearts. Ay, 
and how grateful they will feel to you for giving 
them the chance ! What a sense of relief is upon 
them when they have thus unburdened themselves ! 
We little know what a deep wrong we sometimes 
do to others by suffering this outer crust of reserve 
to gather about them. 

Whether you govern best by a reserved, digni- 
fied demeanor, or by an open, cheery manner, 
may be a question. Each has its advantage, and 
each is very effective in its occasional deviations 
into the system of the other. The genialities of 
stern men, and the asperities of genial ones, are 
each very impressive in their way. Indeed, the 
question of manner, in connection with my present 
topic of discourse, is one of such high importance 
that I cannot summarily dismiss it. I do not say 
that it is a thing to be studied. To lay down any 
rules on the subject is a vain thing. People who 
shape their outward behavior with elaborate design 
generally overreach themselves. Nothing but a 
really natural manner is genuinely successful in 
the long run. Now the natural manner of some 
people is good, of others hopelessly bad, though 
there may be little difference in the good stuff be- 
neath. It is hard that we should be prejudiced by 






OPENNESS AND RESERVE. IQ 3 

what is merely superficial; but we are. I have 
heard it said that this is not prejudice, — for the 
manner is the outward and visible sign of the man. 
But there are very excellent people in the world 
with manners the reverse of pleasant, — people shy 
and reserved, or brusque and boorish, with whom 
personal intercourse is by no means a delight. 
Others, again, there are, with whom half an hour's 
talk is like an invigorating bath of sunshine. In 
this last there is an element of success. There is 
another successful manner, too, — one which im- 
presses every one with a sense of your power. If 
you have both, — that is, a manner at once gracious 
and powerful, — you have everything that you can 
wish as an outward aid to success. A thoroughly 
good manner will often do much to neutralize the 
ill effects of an unprepossessing appearance. But 
an ill-favored countenance may be a stumbling- 
block at the outset that is never surmounted. It 
repels at the first start. There are people described 
as "unpresentable," who have giants to contend 
against at their first start in life. When they have 
once made their way in the world, the insignificance 
or grotesqueness of their appearance is a matter of 
no moment. Nay, indeed, we may not unfairly 
assign some additional credit to the man who has 
forced his way to the front, in spite of all physical 
defects and personal drawbacks. But it is an awful 
thing for a young beginner to have to contend 
against the impediments of a bad face, an insignifi- 



104 



SUCCESS. 



cant or an ungainly figure, and a bad manner in 
the presence of others. 

However material to the subject under discus- 
sion, these last remarks appear here in the nature 
of a digression ; and I do not know that I can 
close this essay in any better manner than by re- 
turning to what I was saying about mutual help. 
Great as is self-help, I am disposed to think that 
mutual help is greater. If we contribute to the 
success of our neighbors, that is a success in itself. 
There are few of us who may not do something in 
this way, assured that we shall not do it in vain. 
And there are few of us who do not want, or who 
have not at some time of our lives wanted, a help- 
ing hand, and been saved by its timely extension. 
Liberality is not for nothing. — " The liberal man 
shall be made fat, and he that watereth shall be 
watered himself." 

And there is this to be said for the success 
which may attend our efforts to make others suc- 
cessful, — that nothing can ever take it from us. 
What we do for ourselves is perishable ; what we 
do for others is abiding. There are many draw- 
backs from our own successes ; none from the suc- 
cess attending our contributions to the successes 
of our neighbors. Ay, indeed, there are seasons 
in the life of almost every successful man, when he 
almost wishes that he had not succeeded. My 
friend Vetus, you can remember, I doubt not, 
when you were just budding into fame, how all 



THE BEST SUCCESS OF ALL. 105 

men spoke well of your doings. And you are 
doing still better now ; but all men do not speak 
well of what you do. They are as tired as the 
people were of old of hearing the praises of Aris- 
tides, and they would ostracise you with as much 
pleasure. But have comfort; that is a part of 
success, sent to teach you the true value of it. 
No one is successful until he has been well abused. 
And it is no small thing at the close of life to 
know how little you have done. It is good that a 
time should come to all " quando etiam sapientibus 
cupido gloriae novissima exuitur," — when wise men 
lay aside even " the last infirmity of noble minds," 
the love of fame, and think that the best that they 
have done for themselves is but a failure. But 
what you have done for others is an enduring 
possession. The bank-note which you gave to 
Asterisk when at the last gasp of his failing for- 
tune, and which set him on his legs again and 
gave him a fresh start and a successful course; 
the appointment which you got for Dash, when a 
hopeless stripling, and which placed his foot on the 
ladder, which he ascended to a high place in the 
public administration of his country ; the encour- 
aging review of Blank's book, which revived his 
drooping spirits just as he was on the brink of 
despair, and made him a successful author (what 
matter that he has since driven his critical beak 
into your heart ?) ; the title which your successful 
advocacy in high places gained for Quis-quis, — 



106 SUCCESS. 

nothing can ever take these good gifts away from 
you ; so let us think more of them than of what 
we do for ourselves, for they constitute the only 
genuine Success. 

December, i860. 



THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STUFF. 

WHEN I was very young, I wrote a novel. 
A friendly publisher placed it, with a kind 
word or two, in the hands of his literary adviser, 
who pronounced upon it a verdict singularly ad- 
verse, not to say altogether crushing. How I de- 
spised the surly critic for it ! How assured I was, 
in my inmost heart, that he was ineffably ignorant 
and demonstrably wrong, envious, malignant, a 
hater of his race ! But I see him now, at odd times, 
on public and on private occasions, a bland and be- 
nevolent elderly gentleman; and I shake hands 
with him, knowing that he denounced the first 
efforts of my Muse, but feeling that instead of my 
bitter enemy he was my very good friend, and that, 
in truth, my novel was far more guilty of heinous 
literary crimes than in his over-lenient verdict 

I do not now remember the words of his judg- 
ment, — that judgment which dispersed all my 
cherished visions of an honored manhood, and 
sent me back to hobbledehoyism and dependence 
beneath my father's roof. It is an old story now, 
and if I could recover a transcript of this first criti- 
cism, every word of which, at the time, burnt itself 
into me like hot iron, I would frame it for the en- 

(107) 



108 THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STUFF. 

couragement of my children. But there was one 
particular passage of the Reader's judgment which, 
after the lapse of a quarter of a century, I have not 
forgotten. He dwelt upon the singular inconsist- 
encies of the hero of my story, maintaining that 
the man who did this or that good thing could not 
have done this or that bad one. I took the hint, 
called my tale The Inconsistent Man, put upon the 
title-page an appropriate morality from Words- 
worth, and published the novel at my own risk. 
And I have often since thought that if it had had 
no more serious defect than the inconsistency of 
its hero, there was no reason why it should not 
have succeeded. But as it had scarcely anything 
that a novel ought to have, and almost everything 
that a novel ought not, it is mere matter of course 
that it failed. How coolly one writes about these 
failures now, — fearful and terrible as they were at 
the time, — almost, indeed, rejoicing in them ! And 
why not ? Are not these early failures wounds 
inflicted upon us in honorable battle ? May we 
not be proud of our scars ? There is heroism 
needed for that conflict ; and shall the hoary vet- 
eran not recite the audacities of his youth ? May 
there not be deeds done out of uniform worthy of 
Victoria Crosses ? Truly, I have known such. 
We may not bear about with us an empty sleeve 
or other outward insignia of our gallantry;* but 

* I saw a pleasant sight, the other day, since this sheet was 
written. Hard by the great palace of Westminster there stood at 



CONTRA DICTIONS. 



109 



we may have had wounds less readily healed, 
agonies less easily borne, and may have gone 
through it all with equal constancy and courage. 

But I have recalled this juvenile experience, 
only to observe that, after a quarter of a century's 
adult acquaintance with life, I am even less minded 
than I was at nineteen to regard men as consistent 
unities. Consistency is so rare a quality — or, 
rather, such a rare combination of harmonious 
qualities — that if statues are not erected in the 
market-place to consistent men, surely they ought 
to be, as to the rarities and marvels of the earth. 
We think that we know our neighbors, — our 
acquaintances, — our friends; but the chances are 
that we know them only in one particular aspect, 
and that, perhaps, the aspect which is least essen- 

a corner, in his neat uniform of green, leaning against a post, and 
ready to be 1 hired, one of that useful body of men called commis- 
sionaires, who do our errands so much more quickly and more 
cheaply than the old race of ticket-porters, — an old soldier with 
three medals on his breast. As I neared him, on my way to my 
daily work, I saw another old soldier approach him, — an older 
soldier, and of a higher rank, with bronzed cheek, and white 
moustache, and erect carriage, and a noble presence ; one whom 
there was no mistaking, though dressed in the common garb of an 
English gentleman. When he saw the medals on the commis- 
sionaire's breast, his face brightened up, and he stopped before the 
man in green, and, with a pleasant word or two, took up the 
medals, one after another, in his one hand, and then I saw that he 
had an empty sleeve. And when I looked at the commissionaire, 
I saw that he also had an empty sleeve. And I wished that I had 
been an artist, to paint that touching scene. 



HO THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STUFF. 

tially true to the inner nature of the man. We are 
wont to say that So-and-So is not a likely man to 
do such-and-such a thing. Broadly, it may be 
said that we cannot bring ourselves to believe that 
men whose leanings are evidently towards virtue, 
who talk and write virtuously, can do things the 
reverse of virtuous; and when we find that they 
do such things we are wont to cry out that they 
are hypocrites. The fact is, that they are not 
hypocrites. They may love what is good without 
doing it. Was David a hypocrite ? Was Paul a 
hypocrite? "The evil I would not, that I do." 
How common a case it is ! I knew a man who 
stood in the felon's dock, who wore the felon's 
dress, who did the felon's servitude. I knew him 
when all men respected him. It was not only that 
he talked good things ; he did them ; he took 
pleasure in doing them. He had a hearty relish 
for good; I am sure that he had none for evil. 
But he fell ; to the astonishment of the world, he 
fell; and when he lay there, utterly crushed, by 
reason of the tremendous height from which he 
had fallen, people with one accord said that he 
was a hypocrite. I remember well the dark faces 
that were turned upon me — faces not all masculine, 
the owners of which were righly honored by the 
world — when I ventured to say that I could not 
believe, having known him in his brighter days, 
that that poor, crushed sinner had artistically 
assumed a robe of sanctity for the concealment of 



HYPOCRISY. IH 

his systematic iniquities. I cannot bring myself 
to believe it even now, after the lapse of years, 
when his image has faded somewhat from my 
sight, and his voice has grown dim in my ears. 
What I do believe is that there is a vast deal 
more of inconsistency than hypocrisy in the world. 
Hypocrisy is a laborious trade. The emoluments 
must be great if they are proportionate to the 
pains of following it. But every man is not a 
hypocrite who does not act up to his professions. 
Video meliora, proboque ; deteriora sequor. 

The Christian confession previously cited is but 
an unconscious rendering of the heathen. It is 
worse than folly to assert that a man is not to 
commend what is good because he is not able to 
practice it. Am I not to admire and to extol 
learning because I am unlearned myself? For my 
own part, I hold that the less harm we do to 
others, the better ; and that " if from the weak- 
ness of our natures we cannot always stand 
upright," it is far better not to sin, as some do, 
glorying in their sins, confounding good and evil, 
and leading weak people astray by pernicious 
example. It has been said, and brilliant is the 
saying, that " hypocrisy is the homage which vice 
pays to virtue;" but, like other sharp epigrams 
of the same kind, this must be taken with some 
qualification. The homage which vice pays to 
virtue by cloaking itself, is not always hypocrisy. 
Genuine hypocrisy is, primarily, homage to self 



112 THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STUFF. 

The hypocrite conceals his vices because he thinks 
that the revelation of them will be injurious to 
him. His homage consists only in the practical 
acknowledgment that vice is less seemly in men's 
eyes than virtue. But we more frequently pay 
our homage to virtue, because we really love 
virtue and would not willingly infect others with 
the disease which we have not the constitutional 
power to throw off ourselves. 

Another error very frequently committed is 
this. We learn that a man has done some wrong 
thing, and straightway we judge him to be alto- 
gether wrong. We are loth to give him credit for 
the possession of any good qualities. It is very 
true, in one sense, that " morality admits of no 
sets-off." If a man runs off to America with his 
neighbor's wife, it is no excuse for his conduct 
that lie paid his tradesmen before he went. But 
it would be very unjust to assume that because he 
has eloped with a paramour he has cheated his 
creditors and violated every moral and social en- 
gagement at the same time. A man may break 
one of the commandments without shivering both 
tables of the decalogue at a blow. The fact is, 
that many men who do very wrong things have 
a great deal of good in them. Indeed, the very 
wrong that they do is often only a riotous de- 
velopment of some good quality, — something that, 
although fair and smooth and glossy and beautiful 
to behold upon one side, is all rough and tangled 



I 



VIRTUE-BORN VICES . H 3 

and confused and unseemly upon the other. The 
gusts of circumstance have caught it, and turned 
it the wrong side uppermost. But it has a right 
side all the same. 

If it cannot be said that the father of evil had 
no originality of conception, and that all he could 
do was to turn our good qualities to his own profit, 
I am disposed to think that this notion borders 
very closely upon the truth. Vices pure and 
simple — vices wholly vicious in their origin and 
in their progress — there are, when we come to 
think of it, very few. Let it be accounted what 
paradox, what absurdity it may, when any foul 
crime has been committed, to declare that there 
was a root of Virtue somewhere beneath that great 
spreading tree of Vice, it is not, when we dig deep 
beneath the surface, so preposterous as it seems. 
Perhaps there is no deadlier sin than revenge; but 
has not the first of English moralists most happily 
called it "wild justice"? Is there not at the bot- 
tom of it a virtuous hatred of the wrong done, — a 
holy yearning after that divine attribute of justice? 
We would fain leave the matter in the hands of 
God; but divine judgments are for the most part' 
slow, and, lacking faith and patience, we would 
forestall the sentence of the one perfect Judge, and 
so our Justice breaks*its bonds, runs wild, and in 
its wildness becomes Revenge. Very unseemly 
it may be to behold, very grievous to contem- 



II 4 THE WR ONG SIDE OF THE STUFF. 

plate ; but it is, after all, only the wrong side of 
the stuff. 

Ah ! if we could only draw the line that sepa- 
rates good from evil, — if we could only obey, in 
our hearts and in our lives, the mandate, " Thus 
far shalt thou go, and no farther," — what a blessed 
thing it would be ! But we go on, little by little, 
up to the very verge of right, and silently we 
transgress the boundary, not intending to suffer 
ourselves on that other side, and not knowing that 
we are there. If, when we are about to pass the 
pickets into the enemy's country, some sentry- 
angel would only warn us of our danger, we might 
be saved in time; but we pass on in the darkness 
right up to the advanced guard of the enemy, and 
are not conscious of our error till we find our- 
selves in the arch-fiend's camp and all his batteries 
playing upon us. 

You have heard it said a thousand times, "God 
preserve me from my friends, and I will look after 
my enemies myself." Apply this to your own 
humanity, and pray to be preserved from your 
good qualities in the knowledge that you can look 
after your bad ones yourself. You are liberal; 
beware of your liberality. You are loving; be- 
ware, above all things, of that " rich loving-kind- 
ness, redundantly kind," which leads us into so 
many snares and pitfalls. You have a strong sense 
of justice; pray to be able to set a restraint upon 
it, lest you should become hard, intolerant, exact- 



VIRTUE RUN RIOT. 



115 



ing. You are firm, resolute, constant ; seek better 
support than your own, or you may degenerate 
into obstinacy, obduracy, dogged resistance of 
conviction, and impenetrable pride. I need not 
run through the catalogue. Every one knows the 
old couplet, — 

" Vice is a monster of sucli hideous mien, 
As to be hated needs but to be seen." 

It is by that which is not hideous — by that which 
is not seen — that we are beguiled ; by the fair 
Delilah upon whose lap we lay our trusting heads, 
unconscious of the depths of treachery which lurk 
beneath that smooth face and that pleasant smile. 
It is thus that our temptations assail us, thus that 
we are lured on to the death. We hear much in 
the pulpit and read in excellent books about our 
" besetting sins ;" but it is of our besetting, ensnar- 
ing virtues, or goodnesses, that we have to beware, 
both for ourselves and for others. Do we think 
enough of this ? Does it enter into our heads or 
our hearts as a matter whereof we should take 
sovereign account in the education of our little 
ones ? Who has not heard that pretty story of the 
child who, when asked how it was that every one 
loved her, made answer that she did not know, 
unless it was because she loved every one ? Who 
would not have been the father of that little girl ? 
Who would not have been prouder of such a jewel 
than of the Koh-i-noor? Would you or I have 



Il6 THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STUFF. 

saddened over that sweet speech, or dared to soil 
the pure reflection which it cast by any prophecies 
of coming evil ? And yet, truly, in that dear child's 
loving nature — and because so loving, therefore so 
lovable — there is much to deplore, much to dread. 
Thinking seriously of it, we know that of all tem- 
peraments it is the most dangerous, — the one most 
likely to bring its possessor to much sorrow and 
much sin. And, truly, it is right, if we can do it, 
to check this propensity to love overmuch. But 
how can we do it ? Lecture as we may, the head 
will not understand, and the heart will repudiate, 
our doctrine. Such a tender plant as this requires 
very careful handling. Can we snatch the baby- 
doll from the young arms, and thrust its fair waxen 
face between the bars of the fire, or send, in her 
tearful presence, the sportive kitten to the inevita- 
ble pond ? And if we could, what then ? That 
treatment does not answer in childhood any more 
than in later life. We try it sometimes with our 
grown-up boys and girls, and only make a mess of 
it. No, if we would moderate such a tendency as 
this, we must above all things avoid violence. At 
best there is not much to be done ; but we may be 
watchful and considerate, and, above all, we may 
take care to provide healthy objects of affection, 
and never to force the inclinations of a loving 
nature, from any worldly motives, — any mistaken 
estimate of what we are wont to call " eventual 
good." Out of such efforts as this come the sad 






LOVING NATURES. ny 

domestic histories which make the records, now so 
tersely tragic, of the Divorce Court; a few lines, — 
just a few lines, — the stories of half a dozen lives 
in half a newspaper-column. 

What is more beautiful than the right side of 
this stuff, what is more hideous than the wrong? 
It is all of the same woof, look at it as you may ; 
but, oh, the difference ! There is the " new com- 
mandment" given to you, broidered on the one side 
in fair characters, and one of the seven deadly sins 
glaring out upon you in ghastly letters from the 
other. Poor lost child, sinful and the cause of sin 
in others, cast away, unrepentant, smiling at night 
beneath the gas, what a very wrong side it is ! But 
it was fair and seemly to behold, before you turned 
that side uppermost. A trusting, loving nature; 
guileless, unsuspicious ; feeling no wrong, and 
dreaming of none in others ; a strong tendency to 
hero-worship, veneration largely developed; ca- 
pable of any self-sacrifice so it but please the one- 
beloved object. How grand in Iphigenia, how 
noble in Antigone ! But in poor Perdita the sacri- 
fice is not for a father or a brother ; and it is only 
a living death. 

Let no one say that this is " dangerous doc- 
trine." In truth, there is no doctrine in it. It is 
merely plain matter of fact. The doctrine, as I 
have already said, is that we shoud pray to be 
protected, not against our besetting sins, but 
against our besetting virtues. And, indeed, do we 



Il8 THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STUFF. 

not so pray ? There is no temptation in sin ; it is 
anything but tempting. We are tempted by what 
is beautiful and alluring. There is a narrow line, 
very finely drawn, almost imperceptible, which if 
you do not cross, you are safe. But the Tempter 
is continually enticing you to cross that line ; and 
you find yourself in his grip before you know that 
he is at your elbow. It is natural that when we 
write of love we should draw our illustrations from 
woman, but there are men, too, "peccante in this 
kinde," — men of gentle, kindly natures, loving 
hearts, caressing manners, — with something in their 
faces, when they talk to women, "like a still em- 
brace;"* men who could not willfully do an unkind 
thing, and who forgive an injury as soon as it is in- 
flicted upon them. But what a deal of mischief these 
amiable sinners do in this world of ours ! They do 
not mean it. They would stand aghast at the 
thought of the iniquities into which they are likely 
to drift, if they were to see them foreshadowed in 
the magic mirror of the Future. But they see 
nothing, and on they go, giving free vent to the 
impulses of their loving natures, untill all at once 

* XOTE. 

" There was something in his accents, there was something in his 

face, 
When he spoke that one word to her, which was like a still embrace; 
And she felt herself drawn to him, — drawn to him, she knew not 

how, 
With a love she could not .stifle, and she kissed him on the brow." 



AMIABLE DINNERS. 1 19 

they wake to the knowledge that God's gift of love 
has blackened into a curse. The world may know 
it, or the world may not know it. Most likely it 
is profoundly ignorant ; it may be very inquisitive 
and very censorious : but how often it is grievously 
at fault! How often even Mrs. Grundy sees only 
the amiable husband, and the kind father, and the 
benevolent gentleman, where, if the curtain were 
raised, if the hidden life were revealed, if the wrong 
side of the stuff, with its frayed ends, were made 
clear to the vision, there would be such a cry of 
respectable indignation, such a shudder of virtuous 
horror, as would strike even the seared conscience 
of the sinner with dismay ! Men who slide into 
wrong-doing, conscious that they mean no wrong, 
soon reconcile themselves to it, and might, without 
hypocrisy, express surprise when their offenses 
come to be described by their proper names. All 
this can be readily understood. And the better we 
understand it, the more impressed we are with the 
marvelous truth of the aphorism that " hell is 
paved with good intentions." Nothing has been 
written more frequently than that men are worse 
than they seem, — that, if we could only read men's 
thoughts . . . 

And, if we could, though many a "good man" 
might be shown to be worse than he appears, many 
a "bad man" might be revealed to us as some- 
thing better. On the whole, perhaps, our thoughts 
are better than our lives. Fatal errors — even 



120 THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STUFF. 

deadly sins — are committed, which have a source 
of goodness, if we only trace those polluted waters 
back to their pure fount There is many a tangled 
wilderness — many a dark forest, "whose very trees 
take root in love;" many a cruel act that branches 
from the stem of a kind heart.* And then as to 
the omissions, — the good things which we would 
fain do, but do not, — which we act in thought, but 
only in thought, yet still with a grave sincerity of 
purpose, — how manifold they are ! Under the 
single apologetic heading of "want of time," we 
might most of us tick off omissions of this kind, 
which, had the will ripened into action, would have 
set up a dozen men with a capital of good deeds 
sufficient to qualify them for the calendar of saints. 
Almost every active-minded man sketches out for 
himself, in the course of his life, intellectual ex- 

* Very many years ago, in the prime of my verdure, happening 
upon a grave truth by accident, I wrote that "the most unselfish 
people often do the most selfish things;" and some critics, whose 
years and experience doubtless exceeded my own twice told, com- 
mended the paradox with a warmth that surprised me. But now 
that I have lived a quarter of a century longer in the world, I see 
the full force of the words far more clearly than when I wrote 
them. The cruelties of the kindly are often most grievous. Even 
in their self-sacrifices at times there is an egotism which gives 
them pleasure, and practically a total disregard of the sufferings of 
others. But they are honestly bent on self-negation, and resolute 
to bear their martyrdom bravely to the last gasp. Do not let us 
say, then, that they are selfish, and condemn them ; rather let us 
teach them how they may better contribute to others' happiness 
and to their own. 



GOOD INTENTIONS. 12 1 

ploits which it would take at least five centuries 
to perform. And we believe that there are a vast 
number of men whose unaccomplished works of 
charity and love could not be crowded into any 
smaller space of time. For want of time, we are 
continually failing in all the offices of friendship; 
neglecting those who have strong claims upon us ; 
leaving visits unpaid, letters unwritten, hospitalities 
unrendered, all sorts of neighborly duties unper- 
formed. How many kind letters does the mind 
write for us, when pen and ink are lacking, in the 
crowded streets, in the railway-carriage, or abroad 
in the fields! How many messages of love does 
the spirit waft to distant friends! How many far- 
off houses do we visit, carrying with us some token 
of affection ! How many welcome guests do we 
gather around our own boards — in everything but 
the solid substantiality of fact! The dramatist 
who said that he had written all his play but the 
acts, gave expression to that which may be taken 
literally with reference to the great drama of life. 
There is friendship, kindliness, charity, hospitality, 
boundless sympathy, — complete in everything "but 
the acts." Are we, then, all humbugs? Not a bit 
of it. We are oftener humbugs in doing than in 
not doing. But we cannot expect the world to take 
the will for the deed. We must be content that 
judgment should be passed upon us for that only 
which is seen and done. When some stroke of 
good or of evil fortune befalls my friend, I must 



122 THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STUFF. 

not, being silent, expect him to give me credit for 
the pleasure or the pain which I have not expressed, 
though it may have filled my eyes with tears and 
made me thrill with emotions of joy or sorrow. 
The letter or the visit of congratulation or condo- 
lence has been paid or written only in the spirit, 
and, though One who reads all hearts can see 
the untraced words on the sheet, and hear the 
sound of the unraised knocker on the door, our 
best of human friends can hardly be expected to 
think that our silence at such a time is not cold, 
unkindly, and ungrateful. In these respects, and 
in others, perhaps, of greater moment, we are 
most of us better than we seem. But life is short, 
and the battle thereof is very sharp and absorbing, 
and we have not always the wax spread upon the 
wall or the style ready to the hand. And so our 
brightest thoughts do not find their way into our 
books, or our best feelings into action. They fall 
by the wayside, and the birds of the air devour 
them. What I write now I had in my head last 
night, as I lay abed in the dark, but with far 
greater force of words and fertility of illustration. 
Why, then, it may be asked, did I not spring from 
my bed, grope my way to a match-box, light a 
candle, and rush to the library? Why! because I 
was weary, because I might have broken my shins, 
because I might have caught cold, and lost the 
bright thoughts, after all, before I had got the pen 
in my hand to give them permanent expression. 



GIVING NATURES. 



123 



They are lost forever. It cannot be helped. I do 
not expect any credit for them. But I say that 
many of us are cleverer fellows than we are in our 
books, and, what is more to the point of this essay, 
better fellows than we are in our actions. 

I have said that there is often cruelty to those 
whom we love best in the sacrifices which we make 
for their sakes. But it is not in affairs of love only 
that this prodigal expenditure of self is often very 
hurtful to others. As there are loving natures, so 
also there are giving natures. Sometimes we find 
them both combined. Indeed, a loving nature is 
commonly a giving nature ; but to give is not 
always to love. I have known some very liberal, 
open-handed people, who would give away, indeed, 
the very shirt on their backs, and yet the depths 
of whose affections are very easily fathomed. And 
truly this is a dangerous quality, — almost as 
dangerous as the tendency to love overmuch. But 
there is something beautiful in it too ; and we are 
loth to check it, though we know that it should 
be checked. Yes, indeed, when that fine little boy 
on his way to the pastrycook's, with his right hand 
in the pocket of his knickerbockers, firmly clinch- 
ing the small coin wherewith he is about to pur- 
chase buns for a nursery feast, is arrested at the 
very threshold of the palace of dainty delights by 
the sight of a shivering beggar-woman with three 
small pinched children, lean-faced and wistful-eyed, 
on the pavement, and presently returns bunless and 



24 



THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STUFF. 



moneyless to the paternal roof, can you or I find it 
in us to utter word of reproach or even warning ? 
We may try — almost we may begin, when we hear 
the artless story, to say, "Clement," with a grave 
face, "I think, perhaps . . . ." — but before the 
first few words are out, the grave look gives way 
to a flushing smile, and all you can bring out is, 
" Clem, my darling, you're a dear, kind boy : here's 
a shilling ; go and buy the buns for me, and re- 
member that the money is mine." And Clem goes, 
with his hand more tightly clinched in his knicker- 
bockers than ever, and, listening to no allurements 
on the way, he brings back the buns in safety, for 
he feels that neither the money nor the buns are 
his — until he gets fairly home, and then he becomes 
undisputed proprietor, and he has his feast, with 
interest, in the nursery. 

Now, I do not say that all this is right : morally, 
indeed, it is very wrong. " Cast your bread upon 
the waters, and it will return to you after many 
days." True; and what lessons of faith, hope, and 
charity — all three — does this teach us ? But we 
must not look for our bread or our buns to come 
back to us in the next half-hour. Where is the 
faith, where is the hope, where is the charity, to 
be exercised under such a dispensation ? It would 
be far better, therefore, if dear Clem had had his 
lecture and lost his buns. I speak very seriously. 
I know how hard it is to look disapprovingly 
upon a kind act. I know, too, that, strictly speak- 



THE SNARES OF LIBERALITY. 12$ 

ing, we ought to assume that Clem would have 
been happier without his buns than with them. 
Little boys used to be so when I was one, — in the 
story-books at least. But, bless the little knicker- 
bockers, in these degenerate days our boys eat 
the second bag of buns with all the heartier relish 
for having given away the first to a beggar. If 
they are not rewarded with a second, they go 
without, and perhaps are naughty enough some- 
times to think regretfully, almost self-reproach- 
fully, of the sacrifice they have made. But even 
boy nature is weak, and why should we expect 
these little ones to be stronger than grown men ? 

But here I am, according to my wont, drifting, 
drifting farther and farther away from the morality 
which I ought to teach. That dear little Clem 
ought really to be cautioned against the snares of 
liberality. He ought to be told that liberality is 
not always generosity. He should be cautioned 
lest, although it is now quite enough to tell him 
that the money in his pocket is not his, he should 
some day be liberal with that which is not his own. 
The man has not always so keen a sense of the 
sacredness of other people's belongings as the boy. 
At all events, we should watch well the good and 
kindly tendencies of our children. It is a common 
saying with respect to the boys, that their bad 
qualities will be " knocked out of them at school." 
If they be proud, their pride will be laughed out 
of them ; if they be quarrelsome, their contentious- 



126 THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STUFF. 

ness will be thrashed out of them ; if they be mean, 
their meanness will be scorned out of them. But 
all their attractive qualities are sure to be en- 
couraged and developed, and if in time they are 
not exaggerated, first into weakness, and then 
into vices, happy indeed is the youth, or wiser and 
stronger than his comrades. It is, therefore, I say 
again, the parental duty to warn a child against its 
kindlier and more attractive qualities, and, if pos- 
sible, to moderate and control them. If we do not, 
we may be sure that some day or other we shall 
see the wrong side of the stuff. 

In no respect, perhaps, is it of more sovereign 
importance to the moral well-being of a man, and 
to the general welfare of society, that the line 
which separates good from evil should be jealously 
observed, than in the manifestations of generosity 
run riot. Doubtless it is a good thing to give, 
and to give freely. The Lord " loveth a cheerful 
giver." But if we do not take heed, our delight in 
giving may lead us not only to give what we have, 
but what we have not, and to be generous at other 
persons' expense. That miserable George Barn- 
well, who when I was young was preached at the 
rising generation on Easter Mondays, Boxing- 
nights, and other solemn occasions, from the great 
dramatic pulpits of the metropolis, went through 
prodigality of giving straight on to murder. This, 
doubtless, is an exceptional manifestation. We do 
not often, literally and corporeally, slay our bene- 



SHIPWRECK OF THE GENEROUS. \ 2 J 

factors in order that we may bestow rich gifts upon 
some frail friend, but figuratively, metaphorically, 
we are afraid, we often sin in this fashion, and are 
generous before we are just and honest. Many 
grievous shipwrecks have come out of this ; and 
the fairest promises have led straight up to the 
felon's dock. Do you think that the poor, blasted 
wretch whom you see quailing and cowering there 
had any natural tendency towards dishonesty? Had 
that miserable George of whom I have spoken any 
taste for blood, — any craving after the excitement 
of highway-robbery ? He did it, not that he loved 
his uncle less, but that he loved another more, 
and he would rather have given her trinkets 
sprinkled with -blood than not have given her any 
trinkets at all. 

This is altogether, as I have said, an extreme 
case. George took what he knew he could never 
restore. He could not restore life ; and he could 
not restore money to the dead. But a large 
number of those who are brought to ruin by their 
heedless liberality have no thought of being dis- 
honest or even unjust. If, directly or indirectly, 
they take what is not their own, they believe in 
their hearts that they can make restitution before 
any one will miss it. Strictly, it is unjust — perhaps 
dishonest — to give or to lend sixpence, unless you 
have the means, without that sixpence, of satisfying 
every rightful claim upon you. Say that the poor 
old lady who nursed you in your tender childhood 



128 THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STUFF. 

is down in the rheumatics, or that little Barbara, 
your handmaiden, who kept long and patient vigils 
beside the bed of your sick wife or your dying 
boy, has been crying her poor eyes out, because 
she has bad news from home of rent that cannot be 
paid, and little brothers and sisters who cannot be 
fed, or that unhappy Bibulus Boanerges, the man 
of letters, who has done you, as you know, many a 
bad turn in his day, now come to drunken grief, 
seeks a good one at your hands, — what right have 
you, as an honest man, to give to one or the other, 
if you cannot pay your tradesmen's bills on demand 
to the last farthing ? None. I know it ; I feel it. 
To give, when you owe, is to give what is not your 
own. This is a great moral truth to be impressed 
upon little Knickerbockers ; and if you catch him 
giving a penny to a beggar when he owes sixpence 
at the lolly-pop shop, — for in these days even little 
Knickerbockers is prone to contract debts — doubt- 
less it is the parental duty to admonish him severely 
on the spot. 

But — stern moralist as I am, after this I cushion 
myself on a but — but, if the wrong side of that 
fine, rich stuff of generosity be injustice and dis- 
honesty, justice and honesty also have their wrong 
sides. Just and honest men, whom I wot of, often 
suffer their virtues to exuberate, so as to overgrow 
some of the milder graces, which I, for one, cannot 
help esteeming. It may be our duty to narrow 
our obligations to the utmost, or, rather, to the 






SELF. 



129 



innermost ; to recognize only the primary duties ; 
to see no neighborhood beyond our own fireside 
or the walls of our own counting-house; to provide 
plentifully for our own offspring ; to owe no man 
anything; and neither to borrow nor to lend. 
This may be right ; at all events, it is safe. I 
confess that I have not so read the precepts of 
Christianity, — but, then, my understanding maybe 
a false interpreter of the truth. " What claim has 
he upon me, that I should do this thing for him? 
By doing it, I may injure those who have claims 
upon me." What claim ? Well, I confess that 
when we come to talk about claims there is very 
little to be said. What claims have you and I 
upon the bounty either of Man or God ? It would 
end at last, I fear, if they came to be tried, in our 
throwing ourselves upon the mercy of the Court. 
It is, doubtless, a very grievous thing when men, 
under the inspiration of a vague feeling of universal 
brotherhood, forget that they are husbands and 
fathers. Books, we know, have been written to 
prove that our kindred have no claim upon us as 
kindred, but simply as members of the great family 
of mankind. Such doctrine is to be repudiated 
utterly. Home first, and the world afterwards. 
But there are those whose maxim it is, " Home 
first, and after that the Deluge." And the home 
of such men often contains a family of which the 
solitary member is Self. The honesty of such men 
is not to be questioned. If they were to die to- 
9 



130 THE WRONG SIDE OE THE STUFF. 

morrow, all their worldly affairs would be found in 
the nicest order; no man would be defrauded of 
his rights. But, Honestus, you must beware of 
your besetting virtue. It is possible that some- 
what more maybe required of you than this strict- 
ness of dealing. The unprofitable servant who 
wrapped up his talent in a napkin was, doubtless, 
a very honest man, — safe to the extremest point 
of safety. But he did not satisfy his master. 
Honesty is a grand thing ; — " An honest man's 
the noblest work of God," — ay, truly. But may it 
not be that there are regions in which honesty is 
measured by a standard differing somewhat from 
our own, — regions in which account is taken of 
other debts than those for food and clothing, doc- 
tors' stuff and servants' wages ? Have you paid 
those debts, O Honestus ? Being human/it cannot 
be expected of you that you have paid them in 
full ; but have you paid even a reasonable install- 
ment of your obligations ? or have you remembered 
the first half only of that most beautiful and most 
solemn precept, "Owe no man anything, but to love 
o?i e anotlier" ? 

Yes, justice and honesty may run riot, — the 
strong even as the weak; but should we not be 
tolerant also of their excesses ? You do not like 
that cold, stern, reserved, case-hardened man. 
Geniality is more pleasant; generosity is more 
alluring. But who knows, after all, that there may 
not be some soft spots beneath that coat of mail ? 



RASH JUDGMENTS. 131 

Who knows, indeed, that the armor has not been 
indued by very reason of those soft spots ? Men, 
ere now, warned in time of their besetting infirm- 
ities, have steeled themselves against them, have 
curbed their errant propensities, rudely and pain- 
fully, and in their outward aspects belied their 
inward natures, bringing themselves to it only by 
habitual resistance, and that, too, of the most de- 
termined, uncompromising kind. It is the tender- 
est-hearted wayfarer, peradventure, who buttons 
his coat most securely over his waistcoat-pocket 
and passes on most rapidly, when the voice of dis- 
tress reaches him from the shadow of the house, 
and he feels, rather than sees, a ragged figure pur- 
suing him along the pavement in quest of alms. 
He hurries on, not to escape the mendicant so 
much as to escape from his own propensity to give, 
and by giving to relieve his feelings, at the expense 
of his principles, and to solace himself to the injury 
of others. And it may be the most jovial of boon- 
companions who refuses the proffered glass, who 
seems to have no good-fellowship in him. Who 
knows that he may not be only too good a fellow, 
that it may not be the constant study of his life to 
hold in due restraint and governance the com- 
panionable qualities which, without such a strong 
hand upon them, might drag him down to de- 
struction ? 

Besides, even as regards more practical mani- 
festations, we may often be very greatly mistaken. 



132 THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STUFF. 

We may know the act of generosity that was not 
done, but we may not know the act of greater 
generosity that was done, — the greater sacrifice 
that forbade the lesser. I had a lesson of this 
kind taught me at school, the impression of which 
thirty years of active life have in nowise weakened. 
Our senior usher — it was a large private school — 
was a liberal, open-handed fellow; he dressed well, 
subscribed handsomely to the cricket-club, and 
had the reputation — it was a glory, not a reproach, 
among us — of being " in debt in the town." But 
the second usher was an intolerable screw. He 
carried the fact upon his back ; it spoke out from 
all his actions. His conduct was as shabby as his 
coat. Of course our notion was that he was by 
nature a skinflint, and that he had hoards of gold 
" at the bottom of his box." He was a man other- 
wise of a kindly nature and a harmless way of life, 
so we despised rather than hated the wretch. But 
it came out afterwards that he had an aged mother 
and two sisters, relying solely for their maintenance 
on his scanty earnings ; and the saddest thing of all 
was — I know nothing sadder in history — that con- 
templating, at the end of one half-year, a pleasant 
surprise for these poor people, he walked home, a 
hundred miles under a June sun, and appeared un- 
expectedly among them one sultry evening, only 
to find that all three were helplessly drunk. Next 
half we had a new usher, and for a little space there 
was a belief among us that the poor fellow had 



RASH JUDGMENTS. 1 33 

saved money enough to start a school of his own ; 
but little by little the truth, as I have told it, oozed 
out, with this pathetic addition, that he had gone 
hopelessly mad. We were very much grieved then 
at the rash judgments that we had passed, and we 
penitentially recanted by getting up a subscription, 
the largest ever known in the school, which kept 
the poor crazy wretch — he was quite harmless — 
under comfortable restraint, until he died. When 
the doctor's eldest son married, and we subscribed 
for a silver tea-equipage to present to the young 
couple, — and when, that prodigal senior usher, at a 
later period, retiring upon his debts, and starting, 
upon that modest capital, a school and a wife of 
his own, we endowed him with a preposterous 
plated epergne fit for the dinner-table of a duke, — 
we had availed ourselves of the opportunity to 
seek special aid from the parental purse. But in 
this instance it was a point of honor and of con- 
science with us all to make solemn sacrifice of self 
and to deny our appetites for the benefit of the man 
we had wronged ; and I am sure, let alone the 
satisfaction of such an atonement, that the lesson 
we had all learned was worth the money ten times 
told. Many of us, I doubt not, were sadder and 
wiser boys from that time. We had seen only the 
wrong side of the stuff of that poor second usher's 
beautiful generosity, and we had not thought for a 
moment that it had a right side, smooth to the 
touch, lovely to the eye, gay with many-colored 



34 



THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STUFF. 



flowers and bright with tissue of gold, such as might 
almost form the tapestry of heaven itself. The 
angels saw, if we did not ; and if we could only 
see things a little more w T ith their eyes, how much 
less injustice would they have to write down 
against us ! 

In the case which I have cited above, the error 
committed, the wrong done, was of the most abso- 
lute, unqualified kind ; we judged the poor man 
to be ungenerous and selfish, when his generosity 
really was of the most self-sacrificing order. We 
altogether blundered over the fact. But some- 
times, although right in our facts, we are griev- 
ously astray in our judgments, looking only at the 
wrong side of the stuff, and refusing to believe 
that there is a right. We say that a man is ob- 
stinate ; that he is stern and inflexible. But we 
know not, perhaps, what a noble constancy, what 
a high sense of justice, may lie beneath those more 
unattractive qualities. Even truth, smooth and 
beautiful as it is, turns up sometimes a side harsh 
to the touch and uncomely to the sight. You 
and I may not sympathize with the Brutuses of 
the world : we may not have enough of the noble 
Roman in us to send our sons to the headsman, or 
to strike down our dearest friends " at the base of 
Pompey's statue ;" but it would be wrong to close 
our eyes to the fact that there is nobility in such 
exploits. In these cases we may fairly assume that 
there is self-negation of the highest order. But in 



A PLEA FOR SHYLOCK. 135 

others, where there is nothing to justify the ques- 
tion, " Had you rather that Caesar were living 
and die all slaves?" there may still be something to 
admire even in the ugliest manifestations of these 
sterner qualities. I have often thought whether 
Shakspeare intended utterly to close the hearts of 
his audience against that poor baffled Shylock. 
As for myself, I must acknowledge that I never 
go away altogether satisfied with the result. I 
have quoted already the Baconian aphorism that 
revenge is a kind of wild justice. I believe an in- 
genious essay has been written to prove that the 
dramatist was aided by his great contemporary in 
the composition of his plays ; and we might, at all 
events, pleasantly conjecture that these memorable 
words had been given by the philosopher to the 
poet as a subject for a drama. That Shylock had 
a strong sense of justice is not to be doubted. He 
took a strictly logical view of the matter, and was 
only beaten at last by a wretched quibble. I have 
known men who have stood out for their ounce of 
flesh just as tenaciously as this persecuted Israelite, 
and with much less excuse. I have known as 
stern a resolution to exact what is " nominated in 
the bond" beneath a waistcoat of Christian broad- 
cloth as beneath the Jewish gabardine. Not be- 
cause such men desire to injure their neighbors, 
but because they have an immovable conviction of 
what is due to themselves. What they contend 
for chiefly is a full acknowledgment of their rights; 



1 36 THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STUFF. 

and, the acknowledgment once unreservedly made, 
they will sometimes yield the thing itself, and be 
generous, when justice is satisfied. I have thought 
sometimes whether Shylock would have taken the 
pound of flesh at last, if the judge had placed the 
knife in his hand. He might have been satisfied 
with his victory, and have heaped coals of fire on 
the Christian's head by showing that the dog he 
had spat upon could forgive. At all events, if I 
were a Hebrew, I would "adapt" the Merchant of 
Venice after that fashion. And even as a Christian 
I cannot help thinking that the smug Venetians, 
being clearly guilty of intolerance and persecution, 
escaped a little too easily. It may be observed 
that Shakspeare, even in the delineation of his 
worst characters, generally contrives to give us a 
glimpse of the right side of the stuff. Even that 
truculent Lady Macbeth is redeemed from utter 
iniquity by the " one touch of nature" which glim- 
mers out in the exclamation, — 

" Had he not resembled 
My father as he slept, I had done it." 

When I first addressed myself to write upon 
this subject, after a colloquy with one to whose 
suggestions I owe more than his modesty will 
acknowledge, I was minded to treat it in another 
fashion. I purposed to show the evil that there is 
in good, or that emanates from good, rather than 
"the soul of goodness in things evil." But it has 



GERMS OF GOOD. 137 

pleased me better, looking at the wrong side of the 
stuff, to show that it has a right, — to turn it with 
its bright smooth surface uppermost, — than to say 
anything disparaging of it because there are frayed 
ends and unevennesses beneath. Whether this be 
the truer philosophy or not, I do not pretend to 
determine; but I am very certain that it is the 
pleasanter and the more encouraging. And may 
we not thus, looking at the matter in this more 
cheerful aspect, find that from the very mode and 
manner of our investigation there are special truths 
to be learnt, — that there are some good practical 
lessons in it which we should do well not to ignore ? 
Morally, it is right that we should judge people 
according to their opportunities. Legally, of course, 
we can take account only of results. Now, the 
results of being dragged up are, doubtless, very 
lamentable. They are apparent in frequent appeals 
to the legal tribunals of the country. Under such 
adverse circumstances, good is very difficult to 
maintain as good. It is speedily perverted into 
evil. There stands the prisoner in the dock, — a 
ruffian and a thief, — with previous convictions 
written down against him. His has been the 
education of the gutter. We say it is a " hopeless 
case." But who knows that still some germ of 
good may not lurk in the secret places of his 
nature, to be called forth again, in all its freshness 
and vitality, under wise treatment and fostering 
care? 



1 38 THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STUFF. 

If we look well into it, we may find that we 
have not to contend with some dominant sin, but 
with the misdirection of some originally good 
quality, — that the wrong side of the stuff has 
turned up very early in life and obstinately re- 
mained uppermost. If we are satisfied of this, we 
may find the work of reformation comparatively 
easy. I have often thought that we take too much 
trouble to find out the dark spots, and, having found 
them, to cut them out with the knife. If we could 
only chance upon the bright ones, our treatment 
would be more simple and more pleasant. There 
may be, we say, beneath them — who knows ? — a 
pure fount of good, from which may flow rivers of 
living waters. Let us make a channel for the 
stream, so that it shall pour itself in the right direc- 
tion, and go rippling over golden sands and clean 
smooth pebbles, not slushing through mud and 
garbage. That young Arab cowering under a dry 
arch, — there has been nothing but the wrong side 
of the stuff for him all his life. Can we expect him 
to be any better than he is ? But peradventure 
there is some humanity in him, if we could only 
find it out. And that seemingly still more hope- 
less subject, — that hoary sinner, blear-eyed and of 
Vesuvian aspect, reeling out of the gin-shop, with 
inarticulate blasphemies in his scorched throat, — 
he too may have some good in him ; and, if we 
could only find it out, he would not be wholly lost. 
Men even in that state have been saved, ere now, 
by an appeal, perchance Heaven-directed, to some 



THE RIGHT SIDE. 



139 



feeling of honor and decency still alive, though 
long dormant, in their bosoms. " You may not 
believe it, but I was gentleman once — I was, in- 
deed!" — or words of kindred meaning — said New- 
man Noggs ; and there was pride in the thought 
which lifted a corner of the tapestry and revealed 
for a time the right side of the stuff. There is 
something to work upon when you have found the 
soft spot. A sweet sound, a pleasant sight, will do 
more than the chain or the lash to subdue the 
maniac to quietude ; and a succession of sweet 
sounds and pleasant sights may bring him back to 
reason, which we may be sure the whip and the 
strait-waistcoat never will. And this is mainly 
because these sweet sights, these pleasant sounds, 
supply, as it were, the long-broken link between 
the present and the past, and bring back lost 
remembrances of peace and happiness in the 
antecedent state. And by the same power of 
association, men whose moral sense is overcast 
may be brought back to commune with themselves 
as they once were, — may see glimmerings of by- 
gone beatitudes, and be purified and humanized 
by the glimpses they have caught of a holier state 
of existence once theirs. If we can only succeed 
in turning up a corner, a very little corner, of the 
right side of the stuff, there is good hope that we 
may soon see it lifted by the mild breath of favor- 
able circumstance, rolling over, fold after fold, 
until we can no longer see anything of the wrong. 
July, 1 86 1. 



ON GROWING OLD. 

I AM growing old. 
I do not mean that I am bed-ridden or 
chair-ridden ; that I am blind, or lame, or deaf. 
I read without spectacles, and I walk my four 
miles under the hour without fatigue. But, for all 
that, there are many things which say that age is 
creeping upon me. I have left off pulling the gray 
hairs out of my whiskers. I am glad when any 
one helps me on with my great-coat. I go to sleep 
at the Play. I have had a sharp touch of gout; 
and I saw myself described, the other day, in print, 
not unkindly, as a " literary veteran." So I sup- 
pose that I am a veteran; and I have been just 
thinking how I like it. 

According to all received opinions, I ought not 
to like it at all. I ought to feel very sad and 
serious over my lost youth. It is certain that it 
will never come back again. Once gone, it is gone 
forever. I know that ; 

" Nothing can bring back the hour 
Of glory to the grass, of splendor to the flower." 

The verdant, grassy, flowery state has lapsed into 
the great limbo of the Past. It has become a 

(140) 



ACCEPTING THE POSITION. 



141 



reminiscence. Am I therefore to bewail it? or is 
it wiser to accept the situation ? Accept it ! ay, 
and more than that, — accept and be grateful for it, 
throwing up my magnificats in full faith that, if the 
glory and the splendor have departed, new glories 
and new splendors have taken their place. 

It is a very pleasant thought that Life is made 
up of compensations. All Nature teaches this one 
grand lesson. There is seed-time, and there is 
summer. There is harvest, and there is winter. 
When autumn comes upon us, — when the roses 
have long since gone, and the leaves on the trees 
are sere and yellow, — are we to regret that it is no 
longer summer and that the greenery has departed? 
Have not the rich tints of the autumnal foliage 
peculiar beauties of their own ? As time takes 
away, so it gives ; as it empties, so it replenishes. 
There is a process of restoration and compensation 
ever at work in the physical world ; and is it not so 
also in the moral ? You have lost a parent, but 
you have gained a child. Do you not see revived in 
your daughter the calm, clear brow and the sweet, 
mild eyes of your mother, as you last saw her, when 
you were a little child? You must not expect to 
enjoy at the same time the beatitudes of the Past 
and of the Present. But I am afraid that there 
are some whose nature it is rather to deplore what 
they have lost, than to rejoice in what they have 
gained. They say that " the beautiful has vanished, 
and returns not;" instead of believing in the great 



1 42 ON GROWING OLD. 

truth that it is continually recreating and renew- 
ing itself. 

And, after all, what is it that w r e lose by grow- 
ing old? Is it much more than the fruit loses 
when it ripens. We lose our greenness — our raw- 
ness — our crudeness ; and surely maturity is better 
than these. But maturity, it is said, is the fore- 
runner of decay. Well, O Wiseman! what then? 
It was one wiser than thou, albeit a heathen teacher, 
who said, in venerable Sanskrit — 

"Weep not ! Life the hired nurse is, holding us a little space; 
Death, the mother, who does take us back into our proper place." 

This from the Book of Good Counsels, O Wiseman! 
— known to Orientalists as the Hitopadcsa, — written 
centuries before we had even the glimmer of a 
literature of our own. But let us look at the 
matter less seriously, thinking, first of all, what 
maturity replaces. We all know how fond are 
the poets and romancers of discoursing upon the 
joyousness, the insouciance, of youth; but we hear 
little of its embarrassments, its anxieties, its morti- 
fications. If there be one faith more blindly ac- 
cepted than all others by the world, it is that 
freedom from care and trouble is the blissful im- 
munity of childhood and early youth ; that these 
burdens increase in volume and press more heavily 
upon us as we advance in years, and are griev- 
ous only in the maturity and the decay of our 
lives. If children were to write essays and truth- 



TERRORS OF CHILDHOOD. 143 

fully to record their experiences, I have very 
little doubt as to what they would say upon this 
subject. And I believe, too, that the testimony of 
very many grown-up men, looking back through 
a vista of thirty or forty years, would be very 
conclusive against the carelessness and lighthead- 
edness of childhood. In the ordinary commerce 
of adult life, there is probably nothing half so 
distressing as the night-fears of the young, — the 
horrible dread of solitude and darkness, which 
crushes the childish heart. There are some sen- 
sitive and excitable children whose lives are em- 
bittered by these vague apprehensions of night 
dangers, of which ghosts and thieves are the most 
tremendous, for all the latter part of each day is 
overclouded by the dreadful shadow of approach- 
ing bedtime. A great deal might be said — and, 
indeed, a great deal has been said, in divers places, 
very much to the point — about want of care in 
nurses, and want of judgment in parents; but I 
am not writing to expose omissions or to suggest 
remedies, but simply to state facts ; and the nursery 
horrors of which I speak are very grave facts, — 
grave even in the retrospect. Yet we talk about 
the cloudless happiness of childhood as though 
children never knew a care. 

And has schoolboy life no cares, no anxieties, 
no terrors ? There is the big bully, or the trucu- 
lent usher, or the fellow you ought to fight and yet 
can't quite bring yourself to do it; the debt to the 



144 0N GROWING OLD. 

itinerant pastrycook, of which he reminds you with 
an indelicacy of which in after-life your tailor is 
quite incapable ; the prize worked for, toiled for, 
with vast brain-sweat, and mighty sacrifice of self, 
grand heroic surrender even of the pleasures and 
privileges of fine weather and the cricket-season, 
and yet not gained after all. And even that 
cricket-season, has it not its own peculiar crop of 
bitterness ? A bad innings sends many a fellow 
unhappy to bed. On grand occasions, such as that 
half-yearly "match with the town," a disaster of 
this kind is pure wretchedness for a fortnight; ay, 
and for longer, if the holidays do not charitably 
intervene. I doubt whether the fates have anything 
half so bitter as this in store for our latter days. 
To be booked, by the general voice of the school, 
as good at least for thirty runs, and to go out, 
branded, disgraced, with that terrible round O to 
your name ! The dreadful feeling of descent and 
humiliation ; the knowledge that you have dis- 
appointed your friends, and given a triumph to 
your enemies; the self-reproach, the self-contempt, 
with which you are burdened, as though you had 
really been only an impostor : they are truly such 
tremendous inflictions that the wonder is that you 
make your crestfallen way to the tent, and do not 
utterly perish before the next boy has taken your 
place. Talk of the elasticity of youth! How soon 
does the schoolboy recover from that round O ? 
How soon does he regain his serenity of mind after 



SORROWS OF BOYHOOD. 



145 



missing that catch at cover-point which would have 
extinguished the Town's best man and turned the 
tide of victory in favor of the School ? Talk of 
the generosity of youth ! In the agony of his own 
humiliation, what boy so generous as to desire his 
successor at the wicket to attach a large score to his 
name? Does not his heart warm to the fellow who 
surrenders like himself to the first ball? Well, as 
we grow older, we doubtless have our failures, our 
distresses, our envies, and. our jealousies ; and I am 
not now saying that in adult life we may be bowled 
out first ball with perfect composure. Spoken 
literally, it might not be to the point; meta- 
phorically, it might not be true. All I mean to 
say is that there are few keener mortifications — 
few so difficult to bear — as those which beset us 
in early life, and that this kind of juvenile bank- 
ruptcy preys upon the spirits and really wears 
the heart with an attrition as great as that which 
far greater failures subject us to in after-life. It is 
very well to say, "What does it matter? — a boy 
may be a very good boy, and yet may fail to 
defend his wicket, and may add nothing to the 
score." But is his reputation no matter? Is it 
nothing that the hero-worship which once attended 
him has gone down with his stumps ? In school- 
boy life there are no set-offs and compensations as 
there are in after-years, and there is no philosophy 
to make the most of them if there were. A hun^ 
dred — perhaps, five hundred — young hearts have 
10 



146 ON GROWING OLD.. 

suddenly cooled towards their idol, and come, in a 
moment, to regard it as an empty and pretentious 
sham. 

We talk of the simplicity, the singleness, the 
transparent truth of boyhood ; but there are no 
such arrant impostors as boys. They go through 
all sorts of penances — martyrdoms, almost — just 
for the sake of appearances. I remember now, with 
a feeling of wonder, the things which we used to do 
in mere boastfulness, — things that we would have 
fain left undone, but that we thought it "fine" to 
do them. What braggart absurdities we committed 
in those days, with inward fear and trembling! 
What would induce us, in later life, to go through 
such self-incurred punishments ? Even those 
school-feasts of which we talked so much before- 
hand were terrible inflictions when the time came. 
We went to bed at eight or nine o'clock, and the 
feast could not come off until the doctor and his 
family were in bed. So we kept ourselves awake, 
struggling against the inroads of sleep, till near 
midnight (taking it, perhaps, in turns to watch for 
an hour), weary, hungry, and athirst, wishing 
heartily that the veal-pies and lobsters, the port- 
wine, or the ingredients of punch, were anywhere 
but behind our beds. When the time came for 
eating, we had generally passed the esurient stage, 
and the promised enjoyment was flat and feeble. 
We lived in perpetual fear of being " caught out," 
and sometimes we were. Anyhow, we were ex- 



JUVENILE AUDACITIES. i 4 y 

ceedingly sick next morning (and, perhaps, for 
some days afterwards), and would have been very 
sorry for what we had done, if it had not been for 
the pleasure of talking about " such fun." There 
was an ingenious process of substituting removable 
screws for the nails which kept the wooden panels 
of which the walls of our room were constructed, — 
a process which enabled us to go into the town at 
night, when we were supposed to be asleep, — a 
performance which was considered the very height 
of puerile daring. I remember that the audacity of 
myself and an adventurous comrade culminated in 
a visit to the theater, half-price, when we sat in 
the dress-circle, and witnessed the last act of Jane 
Shore and an after-piece. I was exceedingly glad 
to find myself in bed again, but I was proud of the 
feat next morning. It was an immense sacrifice of 
the Present to the Future. And when I think over 
it now, I am inclined to think that it is out of such 
sacrifices as this that our maturer heroism arises. 
I wonder whether any one who volunteers for a 
forlorn-hope ever likes it. In the schoolboy freaks 
of which I have spoken, we had no sustaining sense 
of duty ; what we did was precisely the reverse of 
our duty; but we were equally eager for the ap- 
plause of our comrades. If we would rather remain 
in bed at fourteen, perhaps we would rather remain 
in camp at two-and-twenty; but we do not. For 
the love of glory takes us out of our security and 
impels us to do what is dangerous and distasteful 



1 48 ON GROWING OLD. 

to us. I do not, therefore, say that even these 
puerile audacities have not their uses; there are 
the germs of better things in them. But when we 
set these things down among the pleasures of 
youth, and talk of its sincerity and truthfulness, 
I cannot help thinking that we succumb to a vague 
tradition. One of the great advantages of age is 
that we are not wont to disturb ourselves by doing 
things that we do not like, simply for the look of 
the thing. When a friend takes me into his stables 
and, pointing out a spindle-legged, vicious-eyed 
mare, who sets her ears back at the sight of me, 
and tells me I shall ride her to-morrow, do I mind 
saying, " No, thank you !" ? But when I was a 
stripling I would have mounted a flying dragon, 
had one been offered to me, and professed a liking 
for that sort of cattle. There are, doubtless, some 
men who never outlive their vanity. There was 

my old schoolfellow, C S , a year or two 

my senior, who never could shake off the boast- 
fulness of his youth. Endeavoring not long ago, 
in the presence of myself and others, to witch us 
with his noble horsemanship, he sprang upon the 
back of his charger with such a show of juvenile 
agility that, like vaulting ambition, he overleaped 
himself, and fell on the other side, flat on his face. 
If one of my boys had done that, I should have . 
been sorry for him ; but, in my schoolfellow, I 
could not help thinking that he was old enough 
to know better. Such follies and failures, how- 



HOBBLEDEHO YISM. 



149 



ever, are only the exceptions which prove the 
rule. 

But of all the different seasons of life, I believe 
that which is most laden with its own peculiar 
distresses is the season of incipient manhood. 
The sensitiveness of hobbledehoyism is very afflict- 
ing. I have heard it said that all this has passed 
away, — that times are changed, that youth is 
changed with them, and that the rising genera- 
tion are distinguished by an amount of cool 
assurance to which, a quarter of a century ago, 
striplinghood was utterly a stranger. I do not 
undertake to settle this point. Possibly it may be 
so. Possibly the cool assurance of which we hear 
so much is but the outward cloak of that real want 
of self-reliance, of that nervous uncertainty, which 
is the normal state of those who have not yet 
secured their position. The very bluster of youth 
has something of timidity in it. I know, at least, 
it had in my time, a quarter of a century ago. 
What agonies I endured in that state of adoles- 
cence ! What fearful turmoils of the mind there 
were, what fears, what fightings, on that terrible 
bridge which unites the opposite banks of boyhood 
and manhood, — when, to speak without a metaphor, 
you do not like to be thought a boy, whilst others 
are scarcely minded to treat you as a man ! There 
are some who may laugh at this. I vow that there 
is nothing to me laughable in the recollection. 
The sufferings of hobbledehoyism have been set 



150 ON GROWING OLD. 

forth with pathetic humor, in the persons of 
David Copperfield and Pip of the Great Expecta- 
tions, with a fidelity which vividly recalls my own 
miserable experiences on the bridge. In those 
days, with an insane ambition, one went in for 
everything. If one could have limited one's 
aspirations, it would have been comparatively a 
light matter to be dragged up into manhood. 
But, with the unlimited assumptions of youth, 
what roughnesses have to be encountered ! You 
wish to be accounted handsome, well dressed, well 
mannered, well informed, active, brave, clever, a 
fellow who fears nothing, who can do anything, 
and who knows everything in the world. In after- 
life, you know that pretentiousness of this kind 
has its own death-warrant written on its forehead. 
But very young men never acknowledge ignorance 
or incapacity. Their struggles to maintain a 
character for manhood are painful in the extreme. 
They do not know that the manliest thing of all is 
to keep quiet. It is their misfortune to be restless 
and uneasy. The fact is, that, the world being all 
new and strange to them, they cannot help think- 
ing that they are new and strange in the eyes of 
the world, and that therefore the world is con- 
tinually looking at them, instead of treating them 
with the most sovereign indifference and cold- 
blooded unconcern. That pimple on your chin, 
Juvenis, has made you unhappy for a week. You 
have looked at it every morning on first getting 






JUVENILE ANXIETIES. I5I 

up. I will not say what you have done to diminish 
its size and its rubicundity, only increasing the evil 
by every new effort to remove it ; and yet no one 
has observed that pimple on your chin, — no one 
certainly has given a thought to it. And that un- 
toward splash on your white neckcloth, dinner- 
bound, which makes you vow never to travel, 
en costume, in Hansom again, — who sees the spot, 
and who would concern himself about it if he did? 
Not men who have got dinners to eat, or girls to 
flirt with, or anecdotes to ventilate with effect 
Take it as a rule, O Juvenis, that we are all of us 
thinking about ourselves a great deal too much to 
think about you. You talk : you wish to display 
your knowledge, and you make a slip. You find 
it out yourself, and you are unhappy. You have 
an uneasy conception of the blunder almost as 
soon as you have made it; you are out in your 
geography, or your history, or you have given a 
wrong date; you consult a score of volumes when 
you get home, find that you really have blundered, 
and are miserable for a week under the impression 
that you have irremediably damaged your reputa- 
tion and henceforth will be accounted an ass. You 
have found yourself out, my friend ; but, take my 
word for it, no one else has found you out ; no one 
has discovered your blunder or given you and your 
talk a second thought. But we are not easily 
taught that, however much we may think about 
ourselves, other people think very little about us, 



152 ON GROWING OLD. 

and that in most cases we make no more impression 
on society than a snowflake on a tablet of stone. 

This continual struggle about what others will 
think of you, this incessant inquietude concerning 
trifles, is, I repeat, one of the main unhappinesses 
peculiar to youth. We gain our experience, even 
in the_ smallest matters, after much perturbation of 
spirit, — much sore and grievous travail. I re- 
member that when I first began to pay visits by 
myself, just after leaving school, I was terribly 
disquited by the agonizing uncertainty as to what 
I ought to say to the servant who opened the door. 
The great question, concerning which there were 
such inward conflicts throughout the journey, was 
whether I ought to say, " Is Mr. Robinson at 
home ?" or, " Is your master at home ?" The only 
thing I cared to know was which was the most 
manly, man-about-town form of question to be 
addressed to the footman or the parlor-maid on 
opening the door. Of course, I only thought 
about myself, for the vanity of youth is egregiously 
selfish. I know, at all events, now, which is the 
form of question most pleasing to the door-opener; 
and I am quite content with that knowledge. It 
may be inquired, why should youth suffer itself to 
be made wretched by such doubts as these (and I 
have only cited one of many familiar illustrations 
that might be adduced), when it is so easy, in any 
circumstance of life, to ask some one older and 
more experienced than yourself, what is the right 



;ht 



VANITY OF YOUTH. 



153 



thing to do ? A man who reasons in this wise can 
never have been young. "Easy"! Why, it is in 
youth the hardest thing in the world. Does youth 
ever confess ignorance, — ever ask advice ? It would 
rather die first ! You or I may smile to see our 
boys assume the veteran air, and do things for the 
first time with an assumption of experience, as 
thoug*h they had been doing the same thing all 
their lives. But if we look to our own early days 
the feeling will be rather one of pity than amuse- 
ment, for we shall remember how we ourselves 
suffered in this transition-state, when we wore the 
toga virilis with a jaunty air, as though we were 
used to it, and it was continually tripping us up. 

There is absolute misery in pretentiousness of 
all kinds, and youth is infinitely more pretentious 
than age. There are some men, I have said, who 
never outlive their vanity ; but, as a general rule, 
it may be maintained that the longer we live the 
less we care what others think of us, and the less 
we strive after effect. I do not mean to say that in 
these strivings of youth there may not be some- 
thing good and noble, — " strivings, because our 
nature is to strive." They are the outward expres- 
sion of what the same poet * calls " our inborn, 
uninstructed impulses" — the tentative, experi- 
mental action of powers immature and undecided. 
A young man feels that he has something in him, 

* Robert Browning, in Paracelsus. 



154 ON GROWING OLD. 

and, not knowing in what form Providence designs 
that it shall come forth, he is continually making 
outlets for it, first in one direction, then in another, 
as though the whole circle of human knowledge 
were not too vast for his intellectual exploration. 
We are often, therefore, astounded by the ambition 
of youth ; but we ought not to be offended by it. 
It is sure to bring its own punishment. To sow 
in vanity is to reap in mortification. We learn, in 
time, how little we can ever know, and how ridicu- 
lous we make ourselves by pretending to know 
everything. When a man has learnt to say, " I 
am as ignorant as a child on this or that subject," 
or, "as powerless as a baby to do this or that 
thing," he has mastered one of the great difficulties 
of life; he has entered upon a new stage of his 
career. If, however, he says it boastingly, scorn- 
fully, he is a greater fool than if he pretended to 
know, and to be able to do, everything. To affect 
to consider the knowledge or the power which one 
has not attained, not worth possessing, is simply 
to write one's self an ass. There is no need, on the 
other hand, of any great parade of humility. You 
are a man. Be thankful for it. It is no humiliation 
that you are not a god. If your neighbor knows 
what you do not know, and can do what you can- 
not do, the chances are that you know and can do 
some things which are out of the circle of his 
potentiality. You do not know one star from the 
other, but you can put the Sakoontala into Greek 



' 



CONTENTMENT. 



155 



verse. You do not know the principle of the 
diving-bell, but you could fortify a city in accord- 
ance with the system of Cormantagne. You can- 
not ride across country to hounds, but you can 
take a round or two with the gloves with Jem 
Mace and not have a worse appetite for your 
dinner. Be content, then ; turn what you know 
and what you can do to the best possible account ; 
and be neither elated because you know so much, 
nor depressed because you know so little. 

If contentment of this kind contributes, as I 
believe it very greatly does, to our happiness, Age 
has a vast advantage over Youth. The great lesson 
of life, the one of all others best worth learning, is 
that which teaches us thoroughly to appreciate the 
fact of the little that we know. This is a lesson 
which no young person has ever yet learnt. There 
is no royal road to it. We come upon it after a 
long journey and after sore travail, foot-sore, sun- 
burnt, wind-stained, and bramble-torn. There is 
infinite satisfaction in it when we acquire it at last. 
I came upon the great fact the other day, so 
quaintly and pleasantly put that it made me happy 
for some time, almost beyond precedent: — "Man 
is necessarily so much of a fool, that it would be a 
species of folly not to be a fool!' It is Philosopher 
Pascal who writes this. As soon as ever you have 
made up your mind that you are a fool, and that 
it is altogether out of nature not to be a fool, a 
measureless calm descends upon you. The con- 



156 ON GROWING OLD. 

viction, however, that at the best you are a very 
poor creature, need not prevent you from diligently 
striving to make yourself less poor. There are 
degrees of folly, — different kinds of fools; and 
though the greatest of all is he who thinketh him- 
self wise, not far behind him is he who does not 
strive to make himself as wise as he can. All 
knowledge is of high worth, let a man but know it 
well. A " smattering" of this or that is not to be 
despised. " A little learning" — say, for example, of 
surgery — may be the very reverse of " dangerous." 
The principle of the tourniquet, applied in the 
improvised shape of a pocket-handkerchief, has ere 
now saved a man from bleeding to death. But I 
believe we are of most use to our fellows by apply- 
ing our little intellect to the mastery of some one 
subject. The word mastery must be understood 
only in a limited sense ; for true it is, as Pascal 
justly philosophizes, that no man can know all that 
is to be known about any one subject, let him give 
his whole life to the study. 

But still he may, as I have said, know quite 
enough of his one subject to make him very useful 
to his fellows, whilst it is the veriest accident if any 
one of his numerous smatterings is turned to prof- 
itable account. If a man devotes his life to the 
study of pin-making, and makes better pins than 
all the rest of the world, he by no means lives an 
unprofitable life. A pin is a very small thing. It 
is, indeed, a symbol of worthlessness. A " pin's 



NARROW SYMPA THIES. i$y 

fee" is held to be next to nothing. But civilized 
Humanity cannot do without pins; and the in- 
ventor of a new pin — say, for example, a pin that 
will fasten without pricking or scratching — would 
be fairly entitled to take rank among the benefac- 
tors of mankind. A button, too, is another little 
thing. " Not worth a button" is an expression of 
contempt. But to invent a really serviceable but- 
ton would be a great effort of humanity, — a button 
that will not play at " fast-and-loose," but will hold 
fast, with an abiding sense of the purpose for which 
it was invented. What agonies have we all endured 
for want of such a button ! I would gladly send 
my modest contribution towards a public testi- 
monial in honor of the inventor of a really service- 
able button. Any one who does something better 
than every one else is to be accounted one of the 
men of the age ; whilst your would-be Admirable 
Crichtons, who squander their strength on many 
vain things, are condemned to rot on Lethe's 
wharf, as utterly unprofitable servants. 

But we must take care that this concentration 
of ourselves does not betray us into an error to 
which, I am afraid, our natural egotism is prone. 
I have glanced at this above, but it demands more 
than a passing allusion. We must take care that 
we do not come in time so to narrow our sympa- 
thies, by continually dwelling upon our pins and 
our buttons, as to believe that the world has 
nothing else worth living for, — that mankind is 



158 ON GROWING OLD. 

divided into only two races of men, the makers 
and the consumers of pins and buttons, and that 
all beyond the great material fact of pindom and 
buttondom is mere surplusage and refuse. Your 
calling may be something higher than that of 
making pins and buttons, or you may think that it 
is, — still, your egotism is equally absurd. Was the 
world made only that you should take cities, or 
discover comets, or put odds and ends of mortality 
together as the framework of extinct mammalia? 
You may not quite think that ; but you may err 
after a like fashion, though not in the same degree. 
It is the commonest thing for men to attach undue 
importance to their own pursuits, and in like pro- 
portion to undervalue, somewhat scornfully per- 
haps, the pursuits of others. It is a foolish, 
small-minded thing to do, and the meaner the 
occupation is, I am inclined to think, the greater 
the store that is set by it. No honest occupa- 
tion is in itself mean; but some pursuits are 
doubtless less ennobling than others ; and money- 
making, for the mere sake of making money, is 
not, perhaps, the very highest. Now, you will find 
that the conversation of men whose main object in 
life it is to make money runs continually upon this 
one subject, or is interlarded with references to it. 
I confess that when I ask about this or that man 
I do not, as a matter of course, wish to be told 
" what he is worth," — worth in this case represent- 
ing the money value of the man and nothing else. 



' 



RESPECT FOR MONEY. 



1 59 



When I was a younger man than I am now, these 
utterly irrelevant allusions to the length of a man's 
purse put me sorely out of temper. But this was 
a mistake upon my part, almost as great as that 
which so much annoyed me. What right had I 
to be annoyed? I can hear men talk nowadays 
about money-making without any feeling of con- 
tempt. When I ask about Mr. Brown, or Sir John 
Jones, wishing to know what sort of neighbor he, 
is, whether he is hospitable and liberal, whether he 
gives to the poor, whether he is well read, well 
informed, a scholar, and a gentleman, I confess that 
I do not much care to be told that he has £12,000 
a year landed property, or that he made half a 
million by railway-contracts. But why should I 
go fuming and fretting and blustering to myself all 
the way home, and vowing that I will never dine 
with Nummosus again, because he will apply the 
money standard to everything and talk as though 
there were nothing but £ s. d. in the world ? It is 
foolish, I say, in him to talk in this strain, but it is 
more foolish in me to be vexed about it. Num- 
mosus is an excellent fellow, — " warm," too ; he 
knows what he is talking about. And who am I, 
that I should go gasconading after this fashion, and 
endeavoring to persuade myself that the money 
element has nothing to do with it? If there be 
one thing which we are all sure to learn by growing 
old, it is that the money element has everything to 
do with it. I was shocked, when I was a young 



l6o ON GROWING OLD. 

man, because the first question asked, in my pres- 
ence, on the arrival of news of a great fire, was 
whether the buildings and contents were insured. 
No thought of human life, of homes made desolate, 
of wives made widows, or children fatherless, dis- 
turbed the hearts of the inquirers. I do not expect 
now, in such a case, to hear any other question. 
I have just read, in Beamish's Life of Isambard 
Brunei, that when news was brought to him that 
his Battersea Sawmills were burnt down, his only 
question was, " Is any one hurt ?" Nummosus will 
tell you, perhaps, that the works were well insured. 
I will not so read the anecdote of the great 
engineer ; but I am afraid that it must be regarded 
as an exceptional manifestation of humanity, and 
that material property, for the most part, enters 
into the calculation long before human life. 

But I have been led by all this out of the line 
which I had purposed to follow. I desired to show 
that one of the great advantages of mature life is, 
that we cease from those strivings after the mastery 
of many things which end in disappointment and 
mortification ; that we learn to measure our own 
powers aright, to know how little we can do, how 
small the space we occupy in the world. I do not 
know that there is anything in the delusions of 
youth which contributes so much to happiness as 
this power of self-measurement, and the calm self- 
reliance which attends it. 



SELF-RELIANCE OF AGE. 161 

" Youth is soon gone — but why lament its going ? 
What we were once we cannot always be. 
Change is the law of life; the seasons three, 
Each after each, of man's great year, of sowing, 
Of reaping, and of gathering into store, 
Follow each other quick. Men say we lose, 
As we ascend life's green hillside, much more 
Than we can ever gain, and oft deplore 
' Their youth and their brave hopes all dead and gone.' 
Yet would I, were the offer made, refuse, 
As one content to reap what he has sown, 
To give for youth, with all its hopes and fears, 
Its restless yearnings after things unknown, 
The self-reliance of maturer years." 

I cannot say how thoroughly my own heart echoes 
all this. When you know what you can do and 
what you cannot do, — what you are and what 
you are not, — the voyage of life is comparatively 
smooth sailing. You cease to be disturbed by vain 
anxieties and restless discontents. You may have 
failed, or you may have succeeded; but, anyhow, be 
it success or be it failure, it is a fait accompli; you 
accept your position, and you are, at all events, 
tranquil. It is with life in the aggregate as with 
the separate incidents of life. You may get rid 
of a disturbing impression — of a painful anxiety 
with respect to something of a vague and uncer- 
tain issue — by passing over all the intermediate 
lesser stages of evil and looking the worst possible 
contingency in the face. The inspired writer, in 
that grand old epic known as the Book of Job, 
wishing to describe a vision of the night supremely 



1 62 ON GROWING OLD. 

terrible and awe-inspiring, makes the patriarch to 
say that he " could not discern the shape thereof.'"' 
The spectral horror culminated in the indistinct- 
ness of the thing. So is it in the ordinary affairs 
of life. It is the formless and conjectural that 
disturb us. Failure itself is far better than the 
fear of failure. We can reconcile ourselves to it 
when it comes. But the common lot of life is 
neither to succeed nor to fail, but to hit the line of 
mediocrity, half-way between success and failure. 
Whatever it may be, the only real wisdom and the 
only real happiness consist in reconciling yourself 
to it, with boundless faith that it is all right. As 
long as, having the third or fourth place, you be- 
lieve that you ought to have the first or second, 
you are a wretch, and there is no peace for you. 
But men who have lived forty or fifty years in the 
world have generally had this sort of nonsense 
knocked out of them. They have, for the most 
part, learnt to believe, what young men are very 
prone to deny, that the world is, on the whole, 
tolerably just to its inmates, and that most men 
get pretty well what they deserve. Neglected 
merit is, in reality, a much rarer thing than at 
the outset of life we believe. At five-and-twenty, 
a man often thinks that all the world is in a con- 
spiracy against him. At five-and-forty, he acknowl- 
edges that the only conspirators have been his 
indolence and his incapacity, — or, perhaps, his 
presumption and self-conceit. He ceases then to 



SENSITIVENESS. ^3 

give way to vain repinings, and humbly, thank- 
fully acknowledges that his slender merits have 
met with ample reward. 

I heard it said, not long ago, by a man whose 
opinion I very much respect, that in the maturity 
of our years we are much more impressionable, 
much more easily stabbed and lacerated by ex- 
ternal circumstances, and that our wounds much 
less readily heal, than in the elastic season of youth. 
I cannot say how heartily I dissent from this as a 
general proposition. It is not to be denied that if a 
man of fifty is fairly knocked down on the road of 
life, he does not pick himself up so readily as a man 
of five-and-twenty. But these knock-down blows 
are very rarely delivered. Life is made up of small 
joys and small sorrows; and the longer we live 
the better we learn not to disturb ourselves about 
trifles. A man who has fought the battle of life — 
who has encountered some stern realities in the 
course of his career — is not very likely to suffer 
himself to be made wretched by imaginary evils. 
Above all, as I have before said, he is not, as in- 
experience is, continually fretted by the thought of 
what others are thinking of him. He is assured of 
his position. He knows what it is, and whence it 
is derived, and he does not disturb himself about 
circumstances which do not really affect it. And 
so with regard to the real evils of life ; with an 
increase of years comes an increase of faith : we 
have somehow or other, even when our troubles 



164 ON GROWING OLD. 

are at the worst, an assured conviction that we 
shall surmount them. The past gives us confi- 
dence in the future. We have lived down other 
troubles, and shall we not live down these ? So I 
think that whilst in advanced years we are much 
less prone than in youth to disturb ourselves about 
imaginary evils, we have far more strength to con- 
tend with real ones, and far more faith to live 
them down. It will be suggested, perhaps, that 
over and above all this, there is the fact that we 
grow case-hardened, — that the continual attrition 
of trouble renders us less sensitive, less alive to its 
influence. But I would fain take a higher view 
of the matter than this, and believe that the large 
and sustaining patience of maturer years proceeds 
from an increased knowledge of ourselves and an 
increased faith in the goodness of God. 

And it is this knowledge, this faith, which leads 
us to cease from all vague repinings and regrets. 
It is hard to say how much misery men make for 
themselves by lamenting either that circumstances 
had not worked differently for their good, or that 
they themselves had not done differently. But, 
in all probability, the circumstances which we de- 
plore are just those which have most contributed 
to our advancement, and the way in which we have 
gone about our work is the only one in which we 
could have done it at all. To take the illustration 
that comes most readily, — a mean and familiar one, 
perhaps, but sufficiently suggestive, — am I, when 



REPININGS. j6$ 

I have finished this essay, to regret that I did not 
write it in a different way, — that I did not apply 
myself more steadily and perseveringly to it, — 
never once turning aside or suffering myself to be 
distracted from my work, instead of getting up 
every five minutes, going to the window, strolling 
into another room, drawing faces on the blotting- 
paper, reading the newspaper, and deviating into 
other irregularities? Of what use is it to say that 
I should have written the essay sooner, and that it 
would have been much better when written, if I 
had done none of these things ? I have the pro- 
foundest possible conviction that I could not have 
done it in any other way. 

" I am broken and trained 
To my old habits. They are part of me." 

So, too, in the larger concerns of life, we may be 
sure that our way of doing our work is a part of 
ourselves, that we could not have done otherwise, 
any more than we could have been otherwise — 
taller, stronger, or cleverer than we are. 

And then as to repinings, — vain, idle complaints 
that circumstances have not been favorable to us, 
— that if this or that thing had not happened, how 
different it would have been ! Ay, different ! But 
let it not be assumed that to be different is to be 
better. One of the lessons which we learn by 
growing old is that all things work together, not 
for evil, but for good. Let us think calmly and 



1 66 ON GROWING OLD. 

quietly over the reverses which we have sustained 
at different periods of our lives; of the disappoint- 
ments which we have encountered ; of accidents 
which, at the time of their occurrence, we con- 
sidered to be gigantic calamities. How small they 
appear even in themselves, looking at them as we 
approach the summit of the hill of life ! But think 
of them in connection with later events and with 
our present position, and the chances are that we 
shall come to recognize them as "blessings in dis- 
guise." I heard only last night of a man who 
owed everything to a heavy blow in early life. 
He wished, when he married, to insure his life, 
but the Offices rejected him. This made him care- 
ful and thrifty; and the end was that he died at the 
age of eighty-five, worth a quarter of a million. It 
will be often thus. By some grand reverse of for- 
tune, in our boyhood, perhaps, we were left to 
struggle broad-breasted against the stream of life, 
instead of quietly floating down with the current ; 
we were cast upon our own resources, compelled 
to put forth our own strength, with nothing to aid 
us but our God-given manhood, and lo ! the result. 
Are we not wiser, greater, perhaps richer, for the 
reverse which in early youth we so often lamented? 
I speak only in the plain, sober, demonstrable lan- 
guage of truth, when I say that I owe everything, 
humanly speaking, that makes life dear to me, to 
a reverse of fortune in my boyhood. Hard work 
has been my heritage. I shudder to think what 



HERITAGES. 



167 



I might have been if existence had gone more 
smoothly with me, — if action had not encountered 
passion in the great battle of life, — in a word, if I 
had had more leisure to be wicked. It is a com- 
mon case. Our very misfortunes save us. It may 
seem very hard at the time. Some one has got 
our heritage, as far as money makes heritages, and 
we bewail our miserable lot; but there is one heri- 
tage to which no man can play the part of Jacob, 
and be even once a supplanter, — the heritage of our 
own strong arm or our own strong brain. To be 
"lord of ourselves" is not to have "a heritage of 
woe." The real heritage of woe is not to be lord 
of ourselves, but to be lorded over by wealth, by 
luxury, or by pride. If a man is really lord of him- 
self, there is very little woe in his portion. Almost 
all the real evils of life come to us from a want 
of self-domination. As a general rule, it may be 
said that the more a man has to do, the more he is 
master of himself. The best heritage, therefore, 
that a man can have is Work. He who laments 
that hard fate has compelled him to work is little 
better than a fool. 

I began this trick of essay- writing very early in 
life ; and, whilst I have been correcting this paper 
for the press, accident has brought before me a 
passage in an essay which I wrote before I was 
twenty years old. The paper, which was one of 
many, was published in an Indian periodical at the 
time. I refer to it now because it discourses — 



1 68 ON GROWING OLD. 

visum teneatis ! — on one of the advantages of grow- 
ing old, — indirectly, or rather inversely, for the 
subject is memory ; and i humbly think that now 
I should not wish to alter it. " One of the most 
manifest advantages of Memory over Hope" — this 
I wrote in 1834 — "is, that as we grow older, the 
former increases, while the latter diminishes. Every 
day gives us less to desire, more to remember. 
Memory moves with the past; Hope with the 
future. I put little faith in anything that grows 
smaller every hour of the day. . . . Memory 
is like a magnifying-glass : the farther we remove 
it from the object we are inspecting, the larger 
that object will appear. Every day, whilst it gives 
us fresh food for remembrance, renders our re- 
collections more beautiful and bright. . . . Thus 
we go on daily increasing in happiness, until old 
age steals upon us with gradual advances, and 
we have gained the summit of the mountain of 
life . . ." There is more in the same strain ; but 
I have quoted enough. Such utterances as these 
are among the audacities of youth, of which I have 
before spoken. But they are not the less true. I 
was told by a local critic, — one of the kindest and 
best of men, — from whose criticism I have taken 
the words quoted, that I was wrong. " Chateau- 
briand observes," he said, "'that the pleasures of 
youth reproduced by memory are ruins viewed by 
torchlight.' We think Chateaubriand is right, and 
we are in a better position to form a judgment on 



PLEASURES OF MEMORY. 169 

that point than Mr. Kaye can be for twenty years 
to come." And now I have the advantage, in re- 
spect of years, over my friendly critic, who has long 
since passed away to his rest ; and I still abide by 
the belief that the blessings of memory are greater 
than the blessings of hope. " We know in part, 
and we prophesy in part." It was wellnigh all 
prophecy when I wrote, and now it is wellnigh all 
knowledge. And I cling to the old faith, and for 
the old reason: that memory increases whilst hope 
diminishes — on this side of the grave. What have 
we old fellows to look for but the eternal rest? 
It is much, — very much, — everything. But I wrote 
as a worldling, and I write now as a worldling, 
and I am not fit to discuss graver questions. Men 
think in their younger days that it would be a fine 
thing to be a husband ; a fine thing to be a father ; 
a fine thing to be a grandfather ; a fine thing to 
write a book, to be praised in the newspapers, to 
be quoted in Parliament, to become a member of 
the House, perhaps a member of the Government; 
and when all this is done, what is earthly hope to 
them ? But the delights of memory are inex- 
haustible. Our first friendship, our first love (per- 
haps our last), our first success, — we can live them 
all over again when we please, and the older we 
are, the more vivid is the remembrance. " jfuvat, 
oh! meminisse beati temporis /" These reminis- 
cences may be " ruins seen by torchlight." But 
ruins, seen by torchlight or by moonlight, are 



170 



ON GROWING OLD. 



beautifully picturesque. I have seen Melrose 
and Furness by these lights ; and day took away 
half their beauties. 

Again, it is to be observed that as we grow old 
we arrive at a just conception of the great truth 
that the pains and pleasures of life are pretty 
equally distributed over the world. We come 
to learn that if in some one respect Providence 
has been more chary of her favors to us than to 
our friends, in others we have had our full share, or 
more than our full share, — good measure, perhaps, 
pressed down and running over. If money has 
been scanty, we have enjoyed a large measure of 
health. If we have been disappointed in our pur- 
suit of fame, we have been compensated by a rich 
portion of love. We are sure to find our compen- 
sation somewhere. And looking at the lives of 
our neighbors, shall we not perceive that, if they 
have escaped some peculiar sufferings which we 
have been compelled to bear, they have some 
sorrows of their own from which we ourselves are 
exempt ? My brother has a better house than I 
have ; he has more servants to minister to him ; 
he has more money in the funds ; — but my children 
are healthier than his : thanks be to God, the doc- 
tor seldom darkens my doors. Why, then, should 
I complain ? We all suffer, — high and low, man 
and brute. I take up, as I write, a little red book 
about Garibaldi at Capirra, — not in any hope of 
finding a thought or an illustration to aid me, but 



COMPENSA TIONS. 



I/I 



in the indulgence of a desultory habit of which I 
have spoken above, — and I come upon a passage 
about the great liberator and his cows. The " cows," 
we are told by Colonel Vecchi, were sick, nigh unto 
death, from eating a poisonous herb called the 
ferola, and Garibaldi administered to them lumps 
of sugar and sage precepts at the same time. 
" Poor things !" he said, " you also have your suf- 
ferings : dreadful bodily pains instead of heartaches ! 
Have not I also my ferola, in the bad treatment of 
my comrades in arms, and in the sufferings of the 
people in Rome and Venetia ?" * No doubt. We 
all have our own particular ferola. We all have 
some subtle poison or other working into our blood- 
But I am not sure that, if I had been Garibaldi's 
Boswell, I should have told this story. Real wis- 
dom consists not in seeking occasions to convince 
ourselves, or to convince others, that we have suf- 
fered like our neighbors of the human or of the 
brute family, but in consoling ourselves with the 
reflection that we have enjoyments like unto theirs. 
If Garibaldi had one day seen his cows ruminating 
in the sun, and had apostrophized them, saying, 
" Happy creatures ! you have your delights ! And 
have not I too basked in the sun? Has it not 
been mine to chew the cud of sweet fancies? Have 

* I observe, whilst I am correcting this sheet for the press, that 
a recent essayist, writing on " Cynicism," has placed Garibaldi 
among the " non-cynics." Perhaps the writer may think differ- 
ently should he ever read the passage in the text. — (1870.) 



172 



ON GROWING OLD. 



I not ruminated — humbly, but thankfully — over 
the applause of a free people, the love of noble 
natures, the liberty God has suffered me, weak 
instrument as I am, to achieve for a great and a 
grateful nation?" Would it not be pleasanter, I 
say, to look at this side of the stuff, than at the 
frayed ends suggesting that poisonous ferola ? Let 
us all think of the beatitudes that are continually 
hovering above us. Let us so believe in them — 

" That neither evil tongues, 
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 
The dreary intercourse of daily life, 
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 
Our settled faith, that all which we behold 
Is full of blessings." 

The poet, as all men know, writes of the great 
solace of external nature. I too have pondered 
these same things, and on the same spot. But it 
is not permitted to working men, save in blessed 
autumnal holidays, to throw up praises and thanks- 
givings skywards from the dear banks of the 
" sylvan Wye." Still, may not we carry the same 
philosophy into our offices and counting-houses, or 
something even still better ? For I hold that even 
in this Wordsworthian passage there is something 
of paradox and contradiction, arising from the 
incompleteness of the poet's faith in the doctrine 
which he professes. Why, in a world so full of 
blessings, is the intercourse of daily life to 



be 



INTEREST OF DAILY LIFE. 



173 



accounted dreary? In the commonest things and 
in the most commonplace people, there is some- 
thing to interest, if we do not willfully close our 
eyes against it It is our own fault if we do not 
see it. It is our own egotism that blinds us. If 
we could be successfully couched for that moral 
cataract, we should see plainly that it is not a 
dreary desert, but a cheerful garden, that stretches 
out before us, even in the most beaten paths of 
unexciting town life. Those " thoroughly unin- 
teresting," " slow fellows" whom we meet every 
day, and whom Adolescens so despises, have all 
their own little romances ; their hearts throb as 
quickly as our own ; there is tenderness of feeling, 
chivalry of sentiment, beneath the outer crust; 
and perhaps the most where you least look to 
find it. 

And through this fuller recognition of the deep 
human interest that underlies the great expanse of 
Commonplace, increase of years brings us increase 
of happiness. We enlarge our sympathies as we 
grow old. The scales of egotism fall from our 
eyes, and we see an inner life of beauty and be- 
nignity beneath what is outwardly unattractive and 
unpromising. I know nothing in the blundering, 
puppy-blind, self-importance of youth, for which 
I would give this deeper insight into life, — this 
enlarged love of humanity. Of course, there is 
another love greater still, of which this human 
love is but a part; and it must not be thought 



I 74 ON GROWING OLD. 

that I ignore it if I do not speak of it here. If it 
does not grow broader, and strike deeper, as we 
advance in life, we grow old to very little purpose. 
But it is not for me, as I have said, to write of 
these things : and my space is exhausted. I have 
but thrown up a few chance thoughts, looking at 
the subject in its worldly aspects ; and even in that 
light there is far more to say of it than I have at- 
tempted to say in this humble essay. What I have 
said, I have at least said gratefully and reverently; 
and I hope that it may bring comfort and content- 
ment to the minds of others, who, like myself, 
have just awakened to the thought that they are 
Growing Old. 

April t 1862, 






ON TOLERATION. 

SOME years ago, under the same good au- 
spices, I wrote an essay On Growing Old. 
Since that time I have grozvn old; and I have 
been thinking what I have gained by it. Per- 
haps the sum-total is much ; perhaps little. I 
am not now going to inquire. I would merely 
discourse upon one of my gains. I trust that I 
may use the first person plural and say that it 
is great gain that as We grow older We grow 
more tolerant. We are less frequently disap- 
pointed, — we are less querulous and censorious, 
— because we have dropped some of the egotism 
of our youth, and have ceased to look for the 
same manifestations from others as we know to 
be habitual in ourselves. And it is not only that 
with advancing age we come to understand more 
clearly that the same inward qualities or feelings 
speak out from different persons after different 
outward fashions, just as different men go by dif- 
ferent roads to the same bourn, or do the same 
business in different ways, but that we learn how 
to take account of the influence of circumstances 
in moulding character and shaping conduct, and 
are more gentle and moderate in our judgments. 

(175) 



176 ON TOLERATION. 

I can remember that, when I was young, I sat in 
a sort of " bloody assize" not only upon the doings 
but on the characters of my neighbors ; and I pur- 
sued with a remorseless egotism all who happened 
to differ from me in action, in opinion, or in senti- 
ment. I may be worse in many other respects, 
but in this I trust that I am better; and I would 
fain hope that many old or elderly people have 
profited in like manner by the attrition of years. 

I am afraid, nevertheless, that there is still a 
large amount of intolerance in the world, even 
among those who have lived long enough to be 
kinder and wiser. For eighteen centuries, ever 
since the Great Exemplar of the Christian world 
stooped down and wrote with his hand on the 
dust, mankind has been open to the same rebuke ; 
and we have been inclined to cast the first stone, 
if we only dare to do it with a knowledge of our 
own innocence. I purpose, therefore, to write some- 
thing on the subject of Toleration, though with a 
full knowledge that I shall leave unsaid much that 
ought to be said about it. It is not, however, 
my design to discourse upon political or religious 
intolerance ; although, having lived much in the 
great principality of Wales, Heaven knows that of 
both I have seen more than enough. Frightful 
things in the way of dispossessions and evictions — 
cruel pressure of orthodox landlords on dissenting 
tenants not disposed to vote for church-rates — have 
often been done, bringing honest men and families 



les 



SOURCE OF INTOLERANCE. 



177 



to the dust of ruin.* Of course, this intolerance 
of the rich begets counter-irritations of intolerance 
among the poor. You may hear it said, " They 

have passed a church-rate, and Mrs. " (naming 

the rector's wife) " has got a new bonnet." Of course 
the notion that the parsoness's new head-gear was 
bought out of the parochial money was simply 
preposterous. But the belief was widely accepted 
among the Poor. It was simply the intolerance 
of extreme ignorance, which cannot understand 
that anything can be done by others without a 
view to personal gain. 

It is this ignorance, indeed, — partly want of 
knowledge, and partly want of imagination, — by 
no means confined to the Poor, which is the source 
of nearly all the intolerance with which the world 
is afflicted. We know the full extent of the temp- 
tations and inducements by which we are beset, 
and we judge others with reference to the circum- 
stances which surround ourselves. But it is no 
merit in a blind man that he is free from " lust of 

* I ought to state that I wrote this passage some months ago, — 
long before Mr. Richard brought the intolerance of Welsh landlords 
to the notice of the House of Commons. I see it stated in a con- 
servative journal that Welsh evictions are pure myths. I feel 
tolerably certain that if the writer had ever lived in Wales he would 
not have written anything so notoriously at variance with the truth, 
I wish that I could believe the story to be a fiction. My own experi- 
ence teaches me that the landlord-screw has been put on very tightly, 
not merely with reference to votes at elections, but in respect also 
to votes at vestry-meetings. 

12 



178 ON TOLERATION. 

the eye," or in a dumb man that he is not given to 
" evil speaking." Men and women, in all condi- 
tions of life, have their special temptations and 
their special exemptions from temptation; and 
there is a moral law, at least, by which we may 
sometimes move for an arrest of judgment, when 
we learn that some poor sinner has been tempted 
beyond what he could bear. Rich and Poor, old 
and young, men and women, are subject, equally 
or unequally, to various internal and external in- 
fluences, all more or less adverse to purity of life 
and integrity of conduct; and it would be far 
better for us all, in the long run, if we would pray 
for power to resist our own inducements to evil, 
instead of thanking God that we do not yield 
to the beguilements that allure our neighbors. 
Every one knows this ; it is the merest common- 
place. But nothing so generally admitted in 
words is in practice so uniformly denied. It may 
be strange, but it is most true, that near the end, 
as we are, of the nineteenth century of the Christian 
era, no teaching is more wanted than this ; ay, it 
would seem that even the teachers need to be 
taught : else why have I read, whilst I have been 
writing this paper at odd times, of an English 
clergyman bringing his dairy woman to the judg- 
ment-seat for taking a pennyworth of milk from 
the can without the permission of her reverend 
master, and of a bench of justices who sent her to 
prison for a week upon such a charge? 



RICH AND POOR. iyg 

Above all things, I think that we should be 
more tolerant towards the Poor. We should en- 
deavor to understand thoroughly what are the 
temptations which beset them, before we condemn 
them for doing what is not done by people who 
live easy lives, and, comparatively at least, "fare 
sumptuously every day." The morning dram and 
the evening visit to the alehouse are, doubtless, 
abominable things; but if Dives had to turn out in 
all weathers at five o'clock in the morning, perhaps 
earlier, would he abstain from fortifying himself by 
a matutinal stimulant of some kind or other? And 
if he had to go home in the evening to a close 
and untidy room, a slatternly wife and fractious 
children, would he not fain take refuge in some 
comfortable place of social resort, whether a club- 
house or a tap-room ? Indeed, without these provo- 
cations, does he not often comport himself in this 
manner? The morning stimulant may be of a 
more aristocratic character than a noggin of gin, — 
it may, perhaps, be sanctimoniously disguised as a 
" tonic," — but in effect it is the same thing. And 
the smoking-room of a West-End club is only a 
better kind of tap-room. I dare say that poor 
Opifex would as soon have a tumbler of soda-and- 
brandy, or a spoonful of bitter tonic in a glass of 
sherry, as the cheaper fluid to which he is com- 
pelled in the morning, and that he would not 
object to solace himself at sundown with choice 
regalia in the smoking-room of the Regimentum. 



180 ON TOLERATION. 

For my own part, I wonder less at the amount of 
self-indulgence of this kind, than at the extent of 
the forbearance that is exercised. I observed a 
man, one evening, who had been at work since six 
in the morning, at the building of some suburban 
villas over against my cottage, shoulder his basket 
of tools and prepare to march homewards. Just 
as he started, a workman from another job, also 
homeward-bound, met him, and said, "How far for 
you, Bill ?" " Five mile," was the answer, — and it 
was said cheerily enough, — as he strode on towards 
another county. I could not help thinking that I 
hoped he would have a pint of beer at some half- 
way house. For my own part, I am afraid that if 
I had to work some twelve hours at house-building 
with a supplement of a five-mile walk, morning 
and evening, on a hot summer's day, I should 
require a good number of refreshers of this kind 
between my uprising and my downsitting. No 
one can forget the heat of last summer,* or how 
rich people lived in a continual state of iced claret- 
cup. There was a horrible report in the autumn 
that nearly all the workmen, of whom my friend 
with the five-mile walk was one, engaged on the 
buildings opposite to me, had gone away largely 
in debt to the proprietor of a contiguous tavern. 
Very strong opinions were of course expressed on 
the "rascality" of the proceeding; and I grieved 



* The summer of 1868. 



BAD LANGUAGE. ;i8i 

over it, because the tavern-keeper was a poor man ; 
but I felt that, if I had been a rich one, I would 
fain have wiped out the score, in consideration of 
those fiery days and the hours of hard toil at sub- 
stantial house-building, at a time when it was a 
laborious process even to lie upon a sofa and build 
castles in the air. 

But there are worse things than beer-drinking 
— worse things than not paying for it — with which 
the Poor are often charged in no tolerant spirit by 
their more fortunate brethren. There is foul lan- 
guage, blasphemous, obscene, sickening the very 
soul of the more refined passer-by, — terrible often 
in its unmeant significance. The extreme inap- 
propriateness of the expletives in common use 
among the " lower orders" proves that those who 
use the offensive words attach no particular idea 
to them, — perhaps do not even know that they are 
offensive words that could shock the most sensitive 
hearer. And, after all, so far as perfect incongruity 
is concerned, the " awfully jolly" or "awfully nice" 
of the young gentlemen and gentlewomen of the 
period cannot possibly be outmatched in inappro- 
priateness, even by the application of the epithet 
which Protestants apply to Queen Mary to such 
things as a good tap of beer or a good screw of 
tobacco. Those who use this and other expletives 
so freely as to send a shudder through us as they 
pass on the highroad, have been habituated to the 
words since they were children — words that issued 



1 82 ON TOLERATION. 

freely from the paternal lips, — and they are no 
more than "very" is to us graybeards or "awfully" 
to our children. It must be in the memory of 
many that less than half a century ago the boys 
at the most aristocratic public schools swore even 
more terribly than "our troops in Flanders," and 
that the most obscene language flowed freely from 
the rosy lips of little fellows of twelve or thirteen. 
There is nothing so readily transfusible as con- 
tagion of this kind. If we could learn French and 
Italian, German and Romaic, as easily, we should 
all be great linguists in our boyhood. And perhaps 
it might be well, therefore, with our shudders to 
combine a thrill of thankfulness that neither the 
examples of our youth nor the tendencies of the 
age have been or are such as to make the dreadful 
words that so revolt us as familiar to our lips as to 
our ears. 

Again, we hear a great deal about outrages on 
women among the Poor. I remember writing, a 
dozen years ago or more, an article on this subject 
in a quarterly review. But I am afraid that I did 
not make the required allowances for the aggrava- 
tions which bristle up so continuously in the poor 
man's domestic life. It may be assumed that men 
in good houses, with establishments of servants, do 
not beat their wives — with fists, or sticks, or pokers, 
or the legs of broken chairs. In a more refined 
state of society the cruelties to which women are 
subjected in the married state are not commonly 



OUTRAGES ON WOMEN. ^3 

physical cruelties. But perhaps they are quite as 
unendurable. And it is not improbable that those 
who now go home every day, when they like it, to 
a spacious well-furnished residence, with a servant 
to open the door to them and to bring them a 
glass of iced sherry, to be quietly sipped whilst 
they are reading the evening papers in their library, 
and who thus cool and console themselves, if need 
be, "before entering the family circle, and who are 
sure to see at dinner a well-ordered table and a 
well-dressed wife and to be regaled with viands 
more or less choice, might not be in a much better 
frame of mind or hand than the ill-educated work- 
ing-man, if they were to go home weary, worn, 
foot-sore, irritated, to a wretched house, with all 
the aggravations, perhaps, of an untidy wife, a bare 
table, and a bevy of noisy children. If under these 
evil influences 

" Ruder words will soon rush in, 
To spread the breach that words begin," 

and words after a little space develop into blows, 
we cannot be so greatly surprised. We may be 
sorry, but we ought not to be shocked. At all 
events, we ought not to pass in our hearts severe 
censures on the "brutal offenders." There is other 
brutality than that of the fist and the bludgeon, — 
quite as cruel, perhaps, and less excusable. But it 
does not bring the culprit before a police magis- 
trate, and, perhaps, is beyond the reach of the 



1 84 ON TOLERATION. 

Divorce Court. The difference is only in the out- 
ward and visible sign ; and the blow which pro- 
duces a black eye, which disappears in a fortnight, 
may be infinitely less painful than the stab which 
inflicts a heart-wound never to be healed till God 
wipes away all tears from our eyes. 

It is commonly said that all these evils — vio- 
lence of word and violence of act — are the results 
of hard drinking. And there is no single word into 
which so much bitterness of reprobation is infused 
as that which closes the last sentence. " That de- 
testable habit of much-drinking !" And yet I know 
nothing towards which we ought to be more tolerant. 
No one, indeed, rich or poor, is more to be pitied 
than he who feels a craving for such help as this, 
and yet, from some constitutional peculiarity, can- 
not find the solace which he seeks without lower- 
ing himself as a reasonable being in the estimation 
of his fellows. It is a fact, in the knowledge of us 
all, that a certain quantity of " strong drink," which 
will freshen and strengthen one man and render 
him more fit to perform his appointed work, will 
wholly unhinge and incapacitate another. There 
may be seen sometimes a man of noble nature and 
glorious intellectual faculties, whom much trouble 
has driven thus to solace himself, and who has 
utterly degraded himself to the level of the beasts 
that perish, — and that, too, by not drinking more 
than would have given other men strength to bear 
their crosses and to do their work with higher 



DRINKING. 185 

courage and clearer brains. One of the finest 
scholars whom I have known in a lifetime of more 
than half a century, — a man altogether of a refined 
mind and a most kindly heart, — utterly crushed by 
the long illness and subsequent death of a dearly- 
loved wife, lived for years in a chronic state of in- 
toxication ; and yet my impression is that he did 
not drink in the course of the day as much as many, 
perhaps most, men could have drunk without the 
least perceptible change. But he could not "carry 
his liquor discreetly;" and so he passed for a sot. 
Poor J. B.! — I never compassionated any one so 
much. Of course he was condemned, and perhaps 
deservedly, — for in respect of drink, whether you 
take a thimbleful or a bucketful, it is all the same : 
the right measure is just that which you know will 
do you good. If you feel that you are " putting 
an enemy into your mouth to steal away your 
brains," you know that even the one glass, which 
gives to another only strength and cheerfulness 
and increased intelligence, and is as a tonic medi- 
cine to him, body and mind, is to you the vilest of 
poisons. But, even looking at it from the worst 
point of view, there should be infinite toleration in 
such cases for those who are driven by much 
anguish, whether of mind or of body, to stimulants 
or narcotics; and truly it behoves us to think 
sometimes 

" That what to us seems vice may be but woe." 



1 86 ON TOLERATIOX. 

There are few who have not read that touching 
passage in one of Coleridge's letters, in which he 
narrates briefly, but with a graphic force almost 
terrible in its earnestness, the evil influences which 
drove him to have recourse to opium. But I may- 
still call it to remembrance. " My conscience," he 
wrote to a friend, "indeed bears me witness that, 
from the time I quitted Cambridge, no human 
being was more indifferent to the pleasures of the 
table than myself, or less needed any stimulation 
to my spirits ; and that by a most unhappy 
quackery, after having been almost bedrid for six 
months with swollen knees and other distressing 
symptoms of disordered digestive functions, and 
through that most pernicious form of ignorance, 
medical half-knowledge, I was seduced into the 
use of narcotics, not secretly, but (such was my 
ignorance) openly and exultingly, as one who had 
discovered, and was never weary of recommending, 
a grand panacea, and saw not the truth till my 
body had contracted a habit and a necessity; and 
that, even to the latest, my responsibility is for 
cowardice and defect of fortitude, not for the least 
craving after gratification or pleasurable sensation 
of any sort, but for yielding to pain, terror, and 
haunting bewilderment. But this I say to man 
only, who knows only what has been yielded, not 
what has been resisted. Before God I have but 
one voice, 'Mercy! mercy! woe is me.'" And in 
these words we see what is very often the whole 



STEALING. 187 

inner history of the degrading practices which we 
are so prone to condemn with all the vituperative 
rhetoric at our command. There are very few, I 
believe, who drink immoderately for the sake of 
drinking. I mean by this that they derive no 
sensual pleasure from such potations, — that there 
is no activity of delight in this self-abandonment, — 
but that the object sought is an escape from posi- 
tive pain. An active misery of some sort, physical 
or mental, is to be stupefied, — deadened; and if 
the same result could be produced by periodical 
doses of assafetida, valerian, or any other nauseous 
medicine, with less injury to mind and body, many, 
perhaps most, would resort to it instead of to alco- 
holic drinks. It is commonly some inscrutable 
physical derangement which lays the foundation 
of an evil habit of this kind, and we should not, 
therefore, condemn too remorselessly that which 
we are simply unable to understand because we 
have not in like manner been tempted. To what 
extent the physical, for which we cannot be respon- 
sible, underlies, in this and other human frailties, 
the moral, for which we are responsible, can never 
be known ; nor shall we know, upon this side of 
eternity, how far it may be taken into account in 
the final reckoning. 

And then of that other matter whereof I have 
spoken with reference to the temptations of the 
Poor, — what is commonly called stealing, — the in- 
fraction of the eighth commandment. The steal- 



1 88 ON TOLERATION. 

ing of a loaf of bread from a baker's counter or a 
turnip from a farmer's field, or the knocking down 
of a stray rabbit in the squire's warren, though each 
offense be the result of the cravings of hunger, is vile 
and unpardonable to the last degree, and society 
would, of course, be disorganized altogether, if the 
necessities of nature were thus to be recognized. 
But is there no other kind of thieving, — no other 
kind of poaching ? What answer would the law 
esteem it to be if a poor man charged with stealing 
a sheep, one of a flock of two hundred, the property 
of a neighboring squire, were to answer, " Please 
your worship, he stole my only daughter''? The 
criminal law can take no cognizance of the latter 
offense, but the stolen sheep may send a man to 
penal servitude for a number of years, and not 
very long ago would have sent him to the gallows. 
I make no complaint against the law : I am only 
pleading for toleration. And I would suggest that 
there may be some among us who could not hear 
unmoved those solemn words, "Thou art the man!' 
But, much as we are wont to err in this respect, 
it must in all truth be added that we do not keep 
all our intolerance for those beneath us. We 
often go grievously wrong in our judgment of the 
offenses of those whom high station surrounds with 
its own peculiar chain of temptations. A friend 
once said to me, "I believe that I should have been 
one of the worst men that ever lived, if I had been 
an idle one." I have felt the same myself at 



TEMPTATIONS OF THE RICH. ^9 

times, and many may echo the misgiving. From 
how many follies, how many wickednesses, are we 
preserved merely by want of money and want of 
time ! If we have not ruined ourselves by horse- 
racing or degraded ourselves by immoralities of a 
kind not so publicly canvassed, we may be thankful 
that we have not had the opportunities which are 
present to those who have time to be killed and 
money to be spent ; but we have clearly no right 
to rejoice vaingloriously in our immunity from such 
evils. A man who is occupied from morning to 
night with honest labor cannot do very much 
harm in the course of the day. But let him be 
exempted from the necessity of work, and place 
thousands to his account at Coutts's, and see whether 
he will be a more self-denying honest gentleman 
than any of our young dukes and marquises who 
have gone headlong to ruin. Perhaps these young 
dukes and marquises are not less to be compas- 
sionated than the toil-worn day-laborers whose 
besetting temptations and infirmities lie in such 
opposite directions and are of such a different kind. 
I do not know anything worse for a young man 
than to come into a great estate on first attaining 
that great heritage of woe, the lordship of himself. 
He thinks the wealth, of which he suddenly be- 
comes the possessor, so boundless ; and there are 
so many tempters lying in wait with honeyed 
words to lure to his destruction the voyager in 
that frail bark where sit " Youth at the prow and 



190 



ON TOLERATION. 



Pleasure at the helm," and all the gay company 
lounge, lauging and singing, whilst the boat is 
sinking in smooth water. 

" Oh, different temptations lurk for all ! 
The rich have idleness and luxury, 
The poor are tempted onward to their fall 
By the oppression of their poverty. 
Hard is the struggle, deep the agony, 
When from the demon watch that lies in wait, 
The soul with shuddering terror strives to flee, 
And idleness, or want, or love, or hate, 
Lure us to various crimes for one condemning fate." 

And, therefore, I say, recognizing this truth, it 
becomes us to be tender and forbearing in our 
judgments, when the sirens are too powerful for 
the young lords of the Castle of Indolence, as they 
put out to sea in their gilded barks. And all the 
more should we rejoice and admire when, as some- 
times happens, all temptations are wrestled down, 
and the will to do good is equal to the power. 
Truly says the accomplished writer of the above 
lines, after dwelling on " the victory in a battle 
mutely fought," achieved by others,* — 

" Yet doubly beautiful it is to see 
One set in the temptation of High Class, 

* There are many of my readers whom I need not remind that 
these lines are taken from Caroline Norton's Child of the Islands, 
which, from first to last, is a beautiful poetical plea for toleration, — 
very tender, compassionate, and charitable in all its utterances. The 
value of such a book must long outlive the occasion which called it 
forth. I have but one, which I more treasure, in my library. 






TRUE NOBILITY. 



I 9 I 



Keep the inherent deep nobility 

Of a great nature, strong to over-pass 

The check of circumstance, and choking mass 

Of vicious faults, which youthful leisure woo, — 

Mirror each thought in honor's stainless glass, 

And by all kindly deeds that power can do, 

Prove that the brave good heart hath come of lineage true." 

A quarter of a century has passed since this 
was written, and England has rejoiced, during that 
time, in noble exemplars of that true nobility, to 
the splendor of which native worth has contributed 
more than rank and wealth and all the outer crust 
of the blue blood. And second to none among 
these is one whom the gifted writer has seen grow 
up among the nearest and dearest of her kindred, — 
that sister's son, whom to know is to admire and 
love. We are all now grieving, as I write, over 
some sad decadences of noble houses, and many 
shallow-brained, sensational writers are drawing 
inferences from them not favorable to our aristoc- 
racy; but these instances are, after all, only the 
exceptions, — indeed, the rare exceptions, — and I 
could cite against every single example of lost 
opportunities many of such opportunities turned 
to the best account. And I am glad to see that 
the highest among us are appreciating the true 
dignity of honest labor. When we are told that 
the head of a great ducal house (and he is not 
alone in this) is apprenticing his younger sons to 
commerce, and wishing them to become in time 



1 92 ON TOLERATION. 

merchant princes, we may well have greater faith 
than ever in the nobility of the land. 

Then again, perhaps, we are not always very 
tolerant to the Young. Much has been written 
lately, and with great severity, against the rising 
generation, as though the young men of the 
present day were infinitely worse than their fathers. 
And in some respects, perhaps they are. But 
ought not we graybeards to consider that, after all, 
it maybe our own fault? It may not be an axiom 
of universal truth that " good fathers make good 
sons." Indeed, I have known many cases in which 
industry, self-denial, and other kindred virtues have 
shown a tendency to "skip a generation," like the 
gout. But there is enough in the saying for us to 
ponder over very gravely when we are disappointed 
and grieved by the conduct of our children. I do 
not think that, in the recent discussions upon this 
subject, sufficient stress was laid upon the fact that 
the age is emphatically one of excessive competi- 
tion, and that men devote more time than they did 
of old to affairs of business, and less to the per- 
formance of their domestic duties. It is a hard, 
grinding, money-making age. Men toil early and 
late for their wives and children, and think that 
they have done well. The man who said that he 
had never seen his children by daylight except on 
Sundays, expressed, with only a very little exag- 
geration, what is a common state of things. And 
I say that such fathers do well in their generation 






PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 



193 



as "bread-finders;" but might they not do better 
if they lived less in the counting-house and a little 
more in the nursery and the schoolroom ? One 
cannot but respect the man who " scorns delights 
and lives laborious days" for the sake of those who 
" are to come after him ;" but there is better wealth 
than money to be stored up for his children. We 
may speak tenderly of the error, but it is none the 
less an error, for our tenderness. Of small benefit 
is it to make money for our children, if we do not 
teach them how to spend it wisely. I have, whilst 
writing this, opened a book, in my desultory way, 
— a volume of Mazzini's Essays, — in which I find it 
written, " Compelled by your position to constant 
toil, you are less able to bestow upon your children 
a fitting education. Nevertheless, even you can 
in part fulfill your arduous mission, both by word 
and example. You can do it by example. ' Your 
children will resemble you, and become corrupt or 
virtuous in proportion as you are yourself corrupt 
or virtuous. How shall they become honest, chari- 
table, and humane if you are without charity for 
your brothers ? How shall they restrain their 
grosser appetite if they see you given up to intem- 
perance ? How shall they preserve their native 
innocence if you shrink not from offending their 
modesty by indecent act or obscene word ? You 
are the living model by which their pliant nature 
is fashioned. It depends on you whether your 
children be men or brutes.' (Lamennais : Words 
13 



194 ON TOLERATION. 

of a Believer)) And you may educate your chil- 
dren by your words. . . . Let them learn from 
your lips, and the calm approval of their mother, 
how lovely is the path of virtue ; how noble it is to 
become apostles of the truth ; how holy to sacrifice 
themselves, if need be, for their fellows." 

It is well that we elders should ponder these 
words of a great teacher — or, rather, of two great 
teachers — when we press heavily upon the short- 
comings of the young. Let us ask ourselves, 
Have we done all that we could do 



To teach high thoughts and amiable words, 
And courtliness and the desire of fame, 
And love of truth and all that makes a man ?' 






before we complain, as it is much the fashion now 
to complain, that the present generation of young 
men are more selfish and corrupt than the past. 
Self-questionings of this kind are of the very es- 
sence of toleration. But there are other questions 
than those which so often result in self-reproach — 
other excuses for the young than the errors of the 
old. Chiefly there are what are called " the tend- 
encies of the age." If our sons, in the adolescent 
state, are not as domestic as we ourselves were at 
that dangerous period of life, is it not true that we 
had fewer temptations, — that there were fewer 
snares to entrap us, — that it was not then, as it is 
now, the business in life of large numbers of people 
to provide, on a great scale but at a small charge, 



YOUNG MEN OF THE PERIOD. 



195 



intoxicating and demoralizing amusements, after 
dark, for the residents in large towns ? It would 
be simply asinine for a man of fifty to say to his 
son, " I did not go to music-halls when I was of 
your age." The son would answer silently, if not 
vociferously, — for the sons of the period are not 
very forbearing and respectful in their addresses to 
parents, — "But you would, if there had been any." 
It may be so. I cannot say that I am at all clear 
on the subject. I should be sorry to put in a very 
distinct negative. I think that we had our " larks" 
in those days ; but they were few and far between, 
and we went home very regularly to the paternal 
dinner. The respected gentleman, who would in 
these days be called my " governor" (there was a 
generation between us), though he had a thriving 
business in the City, by which he made more than 
a quarter of a million out of half a crown, was at 
home to dinner on Wandsworth Common every 
day at half-past five; and I well remember the 
agony of mind that I suffered if by any unhappy 
chance I seemed to be at such a distance from 
home as to be likely not to be full dressed, in 
complete suit of black, white neckcloth, black silk 
stockings and pumps, to appear in the drawing- 
room in response to the "second bell." I am 
afraid that the. young men of the period are very 
irregular in this respect, — that their place at the 
dinner-table is often vacant without any explana- 
tion, or that they dribble into it with the second 



ig6 ON TOLERATION. 






course. We never ventured to appear late in those 
days, and were fain, in case of default, to make 
interest with the butler to get something cold in 
the odd room, which was called " the study." But 
then the " governor" of those days was more 
regular than he is in these. Clubs were only in 
their infancy. Those family compacts, which are 
anything but infrequent nowadays, for a paternal 
dinner at the club, that wife and daughters may 
have more time to dress for opera or ball, were 
unknown when I was a boy, for dinners were early. 
Men drop in at their clubs on their way home- 
wards, and appear about eight o'clock. Of course 
this kind of irregularity affects the younger mem- 
bers of the family. The absence of the parental 
red tape begets looseness of conduct; and the 
ubiquitous attractions of the music-halls in such 
circumstances are not to be resisted. I wonder 
what is the amount of capital sunk in these insti- 
tutions, and what the statistics of the female popu- 
lation engaged to appear nightly in the scantiest 
possible attire ? It is true that we had the " Cider 
Cellars" and the "Coal Hole" in my young days, 
but the coarseness there was all masculine, and our 
attendances were rare. I do not remember that 
they had much effect upon the lives of our genera- 
tion. Perhaps they rather disgusted us. 

That continual pest of much smoking had not 
grown up in those days. It was feebly struggling 
into English existence, and was not recognized as 



WOMANLY WEAKNESSES. 



197 



a legitimate custom. Such was the repugnance of 
most elderly people to the habit, when I was a 
stripling, that when I occasionally indulged, on the 
top of a coach or during a pull up the river, in a 
cigar (to smoke a pipe was in those days an unfail- 
ing mark of the canaille), I never dared to present 
myself in the family circle without an entire change 
of clothes, and at least an hour of ablution and de- 
odorization by means of lavender-water or eau-de- 
Cologne. And yet such was the keenness of the 
olfactory nerves of the period that I was generally 
detected after all. Smoking has now become a 
habit among us; and it would be intolerant on our 
part to condemn our sons because they bring their 
pipes out of their pockets after breakfast, and, after 
an unknown number of applications to the weed 
during the daytime, finish up with a smoke before 
going to bed. Of course they do not hesitate to 
appear before their parents reeking with tobacco, 
or to light their pipes (to put the case mildly) in 
the hall. But the age — not the boys — dear fel- 
lows ! — is to be blamed for this. We should have 
done the same when we were youngsters, if the 
customs of the period had been in our favor. 

Again, I think that we men are not very tolerant 
of what we call the weaknesses of women, — but in 
which, after all, lies much of their strength. The 
commonest complaint of all is, that they are "fond 
of dress." For my own part, I would not give 
much for a woman who is not fond of dress. Nor 



I 9 8 ON TOLERATION. 

would I care much to know a man indisposed 
to encourage this feminine fondness.* The true 
knightly instinct is to feel towards the chosen one 
an unfailing desire 

" To compass her with sweet observances, 
To dress her beautifully, and keep her true." 

I can hardly conceive any greater delight for an 
honest, loving gentleman than to do these good 
works and to mark their results. And it is to be 
said that in many, if not in most, instances, the 
desire to dress well is only a desire to please. As 
between husband and wife, carelessness in dress is 
one of the first indications of declining affection. 
And even if, as sometimes happens, the love of 
dress is, for the most part, a desire to outshine 
other women, it is a natural, indeed a harmless, 
emulation. If women have no nobler ambitions, 
it is mainly the fault of the men. If they cannot 
speak each other down in debate, they may dress 
each other down in society. It may be said that 
victor}- depends in such a case upon the husband's 
purse or the dressmaker's art, not upon the genius 
of the competitor. But this is true only in a 
limited sense. No amount of money to buy 
clothes, and no skill in the artiste who makes 
them, can compensate for a want of taste in the 
wearer. Taste in dress commonly indicates a 

* See note at the end of this E? 



MANYSIDEDNESS OF LOVE. igg 

general sense of the becoming in all domestic con- 
cerns. The Frenchman who wrote a treatise on 
The Duty of a Pretty Woman to Look Pretty, did 
not address himself to the discussion of a mere 
frivolity. There was an under-current of philos- 
ophy beneath it. And surely there is something 
like ingratitude to the Giver of all good gifts not 
to treasure and to cherish, even to rejoice in, the 
divinest of them all. 

I think, too, that we are somewhat prone to 
misunderstand and to misjudge women, because 
their ways are so different from the manifestations 
of our masculine natures. It is common, for 
example, to attribute want of affection to others, 
merely because it is not in their nature to be 
affectionate after our own external pattern. We 
break our hearts over the thought, " I should not 
have done this or that," and, with the marvelously 
false logic of self-torture, we say, " If there were 
any true love, this thing could not be." But love 
is not one, but many. Its angel-wings are of varied 
plumage. I had a very dear friend who married, 
as men the wisest among us often do, a woman 
younger than and much unlike himself, — in all 
ways charming, but in all ways provoking too, 
as only very pretty women can be, — saucily, co- 
quettishly, petulantly provoking, often rainy and 
stormy, but with marvelous gleams of tender sun- 
shine, — beautiful and bewitching and irresistible 
always ; treading down reason, judgment, all things 



200 ON TOLERATION. 

with her small foot, and snapping all the bound- 
aries that lie between right and wrong with her 
queenly hand. Some men would have resented 
this : my friend saddened under it Like Shak- 
speare's Moor, he was " not easily jealous," but, in 
time, he came to be " perplexed in the extreme." 
So he spoke to her one day, very gravely and 
sorrowfully, saying that he was afraid that she did 
not love him, — that she would have been happier 
with some one else. And what did she do ? She 
turned upon him a face radiant with happiness, 
and said, " You dear old goose, not love you ! — 
' happier with some one else' ! Why, if I had 
married any one else but my silly old darling, I 
should have worried him into his grave in a month. 
But you must take me as I am, you know, and let 
me love you in my own way." And from that 
time a great contentment came upon him. With 
his tenderness, which was unfailing, there went 
forth towards her an infinite toleration ; and in time 
it came to pass that he would not have changed 
the love which she gave him " in her own way" for 
any love shaped in accordance with the standard of 
his egotism. What she gave him was all herself, 
as he found, not as once he wished to fashion, her; 
and it was far better than anything he could have 
made. Sickness fell upon him, and she was the 
gentlest of nurses. Poverty — I mean what was 
poverty to them — descended upon him, and she 
was the most self-denying of helpmates. She 



CLAIMS OF THE BREAD-FINDER. 2 0I 

who had been wont to have every wish gratified, 
and to pout, perhaps to murmur, if it were not, 
now subdued herself to all the wishes of another. 
She who had once exacted, now yielded every- 
thing ; and she lovingly confessed, " I am happier 
now, dear, than when I was your spoilt child." 
And I believe that this is anything but an un- 
common story. We blame others, and we worry 
ourselves, mainly because, lacking the necessary 
amount of imagination, we cannot go out of our- 
selves, — we cannot eat our way out of the hard 
shell of our egotism and look abroad upon the 
manysidedness of human nature. 

I do not mean to imply that all the injustice, 
as between men and women, is committed by the 
former and endured by the latter. I am afraid 
that women are sometimes a little intolerant and 
unjust, simply from a want of right understanding 
of masculine irritations and provocations, and the 
general environments, indeed, of the bread-finder. 
The commonest thing of all is to think that men 
are " cross," — ill-tempered, saturnine, — when they 
are only serious and silent, perhaps weary and 
careworn. They may have had many crosses out- 
of-doors, but they have no crossness at home, and 
at the very bottom, perhaps, of their solemnity is 
an infinitude of tenderness and love. I do not 
know how I can put my meaning better than in 
the words of a valued friend, to whom years had, 
indeed, brought the toleration for which I am con- 



202 ON TOLERATION. 

tending. One of his young daughters had said to 
him, — as young girls are somewhat prone to say, — 
"I wish I were a man!" — and he had not answered 
her at once, save with a word or two of dissent, but 
had waited till she was a little older ; and, one day, 
the opportunity having arisen, he spoke to her 
after this fashion: 

" You remember, darling, when you told me 
that you wished you were a man, and I replied 
that you would soon revoke the wish, if you were 
tried? I did not then answer your 'Why?' but 
I will tell you now that you are better able to 
understand me. You say that when I come home 
from my daily official work in London, I some- 
times 'look so cross.' I take a candle, perhaps, 
and go straight to my dressing-room, and when we 
are seated all together at the dinner-table I am 
silent and thoughtful ; and then you think that I 
am cross, and you are all silent because I am. 
But I am only wearied and worried. I have had, 
perhaps, not only much to do, but much to endure. 
You have all of you spent your day very differ- 
ently, and, therefore, feel very differently at the 
close of it. If I am careworn, my cares are not 
selfish cares. You have, all of you, not only a 
place in them severally, but together you absorb 
them all. If, at times, my losses are heavy and 
prospects appear to be bad, is the anxiety which 
will not suffer me to wear a cheerful countenance 
anxiety for myself alone? There is so little 






MISUNDERSTANDINGS. 



203 



selfishness in it, that sometimes, cowardly as it 
might have been, I have longed to strike my 
colors and to desist from this great battle of life. 
A very little suffices for a man of my years, who 
has outgrown the passions and ambitions of life 
and longs for nothing more than rest. And if I 
am grave sometimes when you would wish to see 
me cheerful, it is only because I love you much 
and am thinking of your happiness. The igno- 
rance which is bliss is denied to us men. I dare 
say you all of you often think that I am un- 
generous, perhaps * stingy.' You think that I have 
more money than I have got, — that it is more 
easily earned and less speedily spent. You know 
nothing of such things as bad times and high 
prices, and necessary increase of expenditure, as 
you all grow older, without any corresponding 
increase of income; and you think that I am 
growing meaner every day, when I am only grow- 
ing older, and thinking more than I did of what 
would become of you if I were taken away. You 
think, all of you, that I do not ' live up to my 
income.' But if I did live up to my income, which 
all comes from my professional exertions, what 
would there be for you when I die ? Do you think 
that, as a matter of mere selfishness, I should 
pinch and hoard? Does not Self say, 'Let us live 
right royally? The annual hundreds that go to 
the Insurance Offices had better be spent on 
carriages and horses, and women's dress, and 



204 0N TOLERATION. 

autumnal visits to the German Baths. Your 
daughters, when you are dead, may go out as 
governesses, or canvass for admission to some 
Benevolent Society. Let us eat and drink, for 
to-morrow we die!' — No language can be more 
intelligible than this language of the ogre Self. 
Do you wish me to be persuaded by it ? 

" This charge of the ways and means, dear, is 
no small matter, I assure you. It is enough to 
make any one grave. When we are traveling, for 
example, in the holidays, it is all holiday to you. 
It goes so easily, that you might almost think, if 
you thought at all about it, that some good fairy 
were administering to all our wants, and ordering 
and arranging everything for us. But you women 
never think anything about it so long as all goes 
well. The railway and steamboat tickets are 
taken and paid for; the hotel accommodation is 
provided and hotel bills are ' settled,' and you 
have nothing in the world to do but to enjoy 
yourself. All this is quite right, and quite as I 
would wish it to be. But if I look grave some- 
times when you are all merry, or if I do not fall 
in very kindly with all your plans and projects, 
you should not think me a disagreeable traveling 
companion. I remember that when we were at 
Wiesbaden last year you thought it very unkind 
that I would not go for a week to Homburg. But 
I had to consider whether in that case I should 
have had money enough to carry us all home 






MASCULINE RESPONSIBILITIES. 



205 



again, and whether, had I been justified in spend- 
ing more money on amusement, I could have 
obtained in sufficient time the necessary remit- 
tances from London. It is well for you all that 
these financial cares will haunt the paternal 
traveler in foreign countries, or some day you 
might all find yourselves stranded very incon- 
veniently on a strange coast. Women, who have 
never been thrown upon their own resources, who 
have never had to fight the battle of life for 
themselves, can hardly conceive how largely this 
money element enters into all the thoughts of 
the masculine manager when he is away from 
home. One cannot travel upon credit, you know, 
dear. Even in much smaller matters, men are 
continually brought face to face very painfully 
with the commonplace fact that there is a great 
difference between having money in one's bank 
and having it in one's pocket. I have known 
times, my darling, when some of you have thought 
me nothing better than an old curmudgeon, 
grudging even a small coin, when I had no 
thought of grudging you anything. Among the 
minor miseries of life, there is none greater than 
that of change. I see you don't quite know what 
I mean. It is money change, 'small change,' coin, 
currency, sovereigns, half-sovereigns, half-crowns, 
shillings, sixpences. In any dilemma of this kind, 
I have invariably found that no womanly member 
of the family can ever help me. Going out with 



206 ON TOLERATION. 

the ' governor,' every one leaves her purse behind. 
And you have, I know, often thought me very 
stingy because I have not given a shilling here or 
a sixpence there, simply because I had no shillings 
or sixpences in my purse. These are very trifling 
matters, but human life is made up of trifles, and 
it is in respect of trivialities of this kind that we 
are most prone to misjudge each other. And 
wishing, as you do, to be a man, I think it right 
to remind you that in the smaller as in the greater 
affairs of life we men have to think for you women, 
to provide our sixpences as well as our thousands 
of pounds, and that you ought to be tolerant to us 
if we have not always got them ready. 

"And when your brother Walter was coming 
home from Australia, how pleased you all were! — 
how 'jolly' you all thought it! There was not, in 
the estimation of any of you, the least shadow to 
mar the prospect. Some of you then thought it 
unkind, almost unnatural in me that I did not 
look upon his return with the same unqualified 
satisfaction. But was it less delight to me than to 
any of you to see the dear boy again ? I could 
not help, however, seeing something else. I saw 
loss of money, loss of prospects, much injury to 
him, to you, to me, to the whole family. It threw 
him back years in the march of life, — the pursuit 
of independence; and my old brains saw all this 
very clearly, whilst you only saw the dear fellow 
himself. I do not know how it would have been 






WORK IN SORROW. 



207 



if I had called upon each of you to forego a moiety 
of your allowances, or to do without your annual 
'outing,' that you might all contribute towards the 
expenses of Walter's visit to England. But, as it 
was, each had your full share of the pleasure, and 
to the lot of the governor fell all the cost. 

"And there are other ways in which you mis- 
judge us. You remember, too bitterly," — here his 
voice faltered, — " that wretched day when poor 
Lilian died. You came in to me at night, and 
found me writing, — doing my accustomed work 
amidst books and papers, — just — just, it must have 
seemed to you, as if nothing had happened. It 
was natural that you should think so, my darling. 
For you could not know what it cost me, nor why 
I did it. There are things in the world of great 
importance, perhaps to thousands and tens of 
thousands, which depend for their due and regular 
performance upon some humble instrument like 
myself. It was necessary that the work I was 
then doing should be done and delivered at a 
certain place before noon next morning. There 
was no one who could do it for me. However 
repugnant to my nature, it was necessary that I 
should do it, even though I should be thought 
hard and unfeeling for doing it at such a time. 
And this is another of the penalties of manhood. 

" But of this I do not complain. The great and 
good God, even of his infinite mercy, sends these 
burdens and distractions to us men in the midst of 



208 ON TOLERATION. 

our sorrow. The necessity of exertion is, doubt- 
less, salutary to us. Even out of the very causes 
of our grief there proceeds much to be done. ' Men 
must work and women must weep;' and it is good 
for us to work, though we weep at our work hot 
tears from the heart. We must order and arrange 
everything even for the mournful accessories of 
death; and there are many among us, and not 
only those who are bread-finders by the sweat of 
their brow, who, in periods of great sorrow, are 
constrained to toil the more, because the earnings 
of toil must be greater to meet the larger demands 
of the season of tribulation. You think that we 
suffer less, because we must be up and doing. It 
will never fall to your lot, my dear, to know what 
that conflict is. But you, who have not to work, 
when great tribulation is upon you, must think 
kindly of us who have, and not fancy that we do 
not sorrow bitterly, because we sorrow differently 
from you. Only the Father 'who seeth in secret' 
can tell how often in anguish of spirit we are com- 
pelled to cease from our work, — how often, though 
the pen be in the hand, there is a mist of tears be- 
fore the paper so that nothing can be traced. We 
men try to ' keep up' before you, darling; but you 
must not think us heartless because we do, — be- 
cause we try even to lead your thoughts sometimes 
away from the one great subject of your sorrows. 
It is the most painful part of our duties, but, per- 
haps, also the most essential. And even the gross 



DROWNING SORROW. 



209 



necessity of eating and drinking at such times 
seems to be heartless in its fulfillment. But those 
who have work to do must be strong to do it. And, 
believe me, there are few among us who in times 
of great sorrow would not rather lay ourselves down 
and turn our faces to the wall and i indulge the 
luxury of grief and refuse to be comforted. Men 
do not complain that they cannot do this, but 
those who can do it must not wrong us by think- 
ing that we do not suffer. We only ask for a little 

Toleration " 

Thus spoke the father to his daughter. And it 
seems to me that there is much in what he said that 
women may take to their hearts, especially when 
they are prone to think that men are stern and un- 
feeling — "heartless," perhaps, is the favorite word 
— simply because the outward expressions are so 
different. I knew a great statesman who, when 
sorely smitten by tidings of the death of his absent 
wife, cried in despair to those who would fain have 
stood aloof in silent sympathy and respect for his 
heavy sorrow, " Work ; bring me work ; you can- 
not bring me too much!" And, immersed in the 
affairs of a great empire, he strove to find in high 
intellectual efforts that opiate for the heart which 
men of lower natures might have sought — elsewhere. 
Every reader knows the meaning of that last word; 
and there are few who cannot instance, as I have 
instanced above, some examples of men whom 
grief of this same kind has driven to the " drowning 
14 



2io ON TOLERATION. 

in the cup," until reason has been drowned with 
the sorrow, and only the brute has remained. 
" Give strong drink unto him who is ready to 
perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. 
Let him drink and forget his poverty, and remem- 
ber his misery no more." No man need be ashamed 
to confess that in seasons of trouble he has derived 
strength and endurance from wine, — or from what, 
among poorer people, is the representative of wine. 
I have heard a resort to such stimulants, or seda- 
tives, or whatever they may be, stigmatized, in 
general language, as degrading ; and so it is, as- 
suredly, in excess. But it is not the only one of 
God's good gifts to man that is sometimes fear- 
fully abused. 

But this has expanded into a digression; and I 
purposed to say something more about the femi- 
nine idea of the relation between man and woman, 
in respect of financial concerns. I do not know 
very precisely what are the provisions of the Mar- 
ried Women's Property Bill, but I have talked the 
matter over with women, at odd times, and I have 
gathered a notion of the view which is taken by 
some amiable casuists. It seems to be the idea 
that they are to have uncontrolled authority over 
their own money, and to leave their husbands to 
pay their debts. They say in effect to the bread- 
finder, "What is yours is mine — what's mine is my 
own." Indeed, the general feminine idea of what 
is called "an allowance" includes the assumption 



v 



WOMANLY ONESIDEDNESS. 2 II 

that the person granting it is to pay just the same 
for everything for which the said allowance is dis- 
bursed, as if no independent arrangement existed. 
I heard a charming story of husband and wife the 
other day, so illustrative of this that I am minded 
to repeat it. The wife had said laughingly to the 
husband — they were young people and sufficiently 
"well-to-do" — that he spent much more pocket- 
money than she did, and that he was altogether an 
extravagant fellow: so in the evening, when he 
came home, he brought a purseful of sovereigns, 
and, taking what remained to each from their last 
supplies, equalized the two little piles to a shilling, 
and said, "Now we'll start fair, darling, and see who 
is bankrupt first." At the end of a week, they 
agreed playfully to compare notes; and it was found 
that the wife had a few shillings more than the hus- 
band, upon which she was very jubilant and tri- 
umphant, and told him that she had always known 
him to be an extravagant fellow. " But, my child," 
he said, deprecatingly, " remember that when we 
have gone out together I have paid the expenses of 
both out of my money. There were the railway 

fares to , and the flys and cabs, and the little 

dinner we had at Richmond, and the stalls at the 
Haymarket, and the Crystal Palace on Saturday — 
all have been paid for out of my money ; and there 
is that pretty new bonnet on your head, in which 
you look so charming." Upon which she lifted 
up her hands and made a mouth at him (it was a 



212 ON TOLERATION. 

very pretty one), and cried out, " Oh, I am ashamed 
of you ! You, indeed, to talk of chivalry, and to 
think for a moment of taking a poor little woman 
out with you, and expecting her to pay her share 
of the expenses ! What will the men of the period 
come to next?" Of course there was no appeal 
against this. He could only put his arms round 
her and kiss her, and confess that he was an " ex- 
travagant fellow." 

There is one more point of view from which I 
would regard this great question of Toleration be- 
fore I lay aside the pen. I have said that I would 
eschew politics and religion, and I shall not de- 
part from my promise, though I may approach 
nearly the forbidden ground, if I say that among 
us there is a great want of National Toleration. 
As a nation, perhaps, Ave English are the most in- 
tolerant people in the world. We go about every- 
where in a spirit of egotism, which clings to us 
like the poisoned robe of the centaur and strikes 
the venom to our very marrow. We visit foreign 
countries, and, so far from doing at Rome what 
is done at Rome, we think that every Roman 
should do exactly like ourselves. Now, I do not 
mean to say that we should accommodate our- 
selves too readily to foreign habits and usages. Of 
course there must be a limit to such adaptations. 
For example, an Englishman in New Zealand is 
not bound "to dine on cold man." But that is no 



NATIONAL INTOLERANCE. 213 

reason why we should be very severe even on the 
New Zealander, who, having an instinct for flesh- 
eating, was originally driven, by want of mutton 
and beef, to dish up his fellow-men as savory 
food. We are wont to call all who differ from us 
in their way of life, savages and barbarians, forget- 
ting that the time was when we painted our bodies, 
and did other very preposterous things, which, 
although conventionally out of date, are not in- 
trinsically any greater absurdities than some of 
those which we encourage and foster in the present 
day. And why do we not take account of the 
conditions of men's birth and training, of the 
terrible drawbacks and hinderances, almost the 
impossibilities, which beset some men before we 
describe them as vile and degraded? Can we 
expect an Asiatic prince, reared in the zenana, to 
resemble one brought up amidst all the ennobling 
influences of Christian life ? Can we expect his 

Highness the of to be in all things like 

unto "Albert the Good"? If he be no worse than 
others of his kind, we should tolerate him. If he 
be better, we should respect him. But do we? 
No. He is unlike ourselves ; and, therefore, we 
denounce him. 

And we do this, on a large scale, concerning 
affairs of government and modes of administration, 
not less than, on a small scale, in respect of social 
habits and fashions, and personal vagaries, and the 
vanities of life. I chanced not long ago, in the 



214 0N TOLERATION. 

house of a friend who holds an official appoint- 
ment, to take up some blue-books relating to India, 
which I found less dreary reading than I expected, 
and from them I learnt that our " goody" govern- 
ment had been lecturing, if not threatening, some 
of the neighboring states, for the monstrous offense 
of bolstering up their revenues by means of govern- 
ment monopolies.* A great fervor of Free-trade 
seemed to be upon our government functionaries, 
who were eager, as shown in the correspondence 
I was reading, to teach true principles of commer- 
cial policy to native potentates on the outskirts of 
civilization, as in Burmah and Ladakh, and to 
sweep away all such abominations as protective 
duties. With the characteristic intolerance of new 
proselytes, we were condemning with fiery zeal all 
who happened to be a few lessons behind ourselves. 
Indeed, it seemed, to my limited comprehension of 
the matter, that our want of toleration went even 
further than this, inasmuch as that we were cen- 
suring heathen governments for doing that which 
we Christians had not only recently done, but 
which we actually then were and are now doing in 
a more lamentable and injurious manner. And I 
thought, perhaps, that an Indian Puncli might not 
unfitly represent the Viceroy sitting on a well- 
padded chair, inscribed " Opium Revenue" and 



* There are, doubtless, some readers whom I need not tell that 
this "friend" was a poetical license. — (1870.) 



NATIONAL INTOLERANCE. 2 I$ 

"Salt Revenue," and teaching, birch in hand, a 
class of native princes to decline the noun-sub- 
stantive Monopoly. One might have a wallet 
inscribed "Oil," another "Timber," a third "Shawl- 
wool," and the like, but none equal in bulk to the 
cushions of the chair on which the pedagogue sits 
to insist upon the duty of free-trade in all these 
articles of commerce. And on the walls of the 
schoolroom might hang a historical picture of 
good Mr. John Company building up our Anglo- 
Indian empire on a broad basis of Monopoly.* 
Somehow or other we always do forget our own 
weaknesses and infirmities of past days, and are 
intolerant in the extreme towards the very errors 
which we have scarcely yet abandoned. I have 
often heard it said — and, indeed, having once held 
a military commission, I have some experience of 
the fact — that no military officer is so intolerant of 
the offenses of the privates under him, as the man 
who has himself risen from the ranks. And so 



* I observe, whilst writing this, that a Member of the House of 
Commons has given notice of his intention to bring before Parlia- 
ment next session the subject of the large amount of revenue derived 
from the sale of opium by the Indian government. But this is only 
another instance of want of Toleration. Governments, like indi- 
viduals, " must live ;" and we must not scan too nicely the manner 
in which revenue is raised. It is not very long since, in our own 
country, light and air were heavily taxed, under the name of 
"windows." Taxation in any shape is an evil, but it is an inevi- 
table one, and we ought not to be over-severe on others who put 
it into shapes different from our own. 



2i6 ON TOLERATION. 

it is both in personal and in national affairs. States 
and individuals are alike intolerant of a condition 
of things out of which they have only recently 
emerged. 

And this brings me back to the point from 
which I started, and, therefore, warns me that it 
is time to conclude. This propensity to condemn 
others is commonly strongest in those who have a 
sense of their own infirmities. It is the inherent 
disposition to 

" Compound for sins we are inclined to 
By damning those we have no mind to." 

But "if, instead of blaming men" — and here I 
quote another, the ever-tolerant editor of Coleridge's 
Letters, — " for what they are, and are made to be, 
we occupied and interested ourselves with earnest 
inquiries into the causes of the evils we deplore, 
with a view to their removal, it cannot be doubted 
that this real labor of love, if carried on with and 
through the spirit of love, would in its very en- 
deavor include much of the good sought to be 
obtained. To me, it seems that the greatest 
amount of benefit will result from the labors or 
the exertions of those who unite the good to 
others with that which is — has been made — pleas- 
urable to themselves ; from those who seek to 
make what is genial and joyous to themselves 
more genial and more joyous to others. This 
is a labor in which not merely some favorite 



'A LABOR OF LOVE." 



217 



crotchet, some abstract opinion, or even sincere 
and honest convictions, are engaged: it is one in 
which the best, the purest, the .highest sympathies 
of our nature are enlisted in the service and in the 
promotion of those enjoyments and of those prac- 
tical occupations from which our own well-being 
has resulted, or with which it has been associated." 
There can be no better teaching than this. To a 
certain extent we know what is, but we do not 
know why it is. We see the effect, but are blind 
to the cause. Only the sufferer himself can com- 
pute the daily, the hourly temptations and provo- 
cations which lead some men — and women — 
astray, whilst others are not assailed. I remem- 
ber, some years ago, to have read in a novel, 
doubtless now forgotten, that a certain stiff, wiz- 
ened old maid, who could scarcely have been even 
good-looking in her youth, exclaimed, when some 
reference to the subject was made in conversation, 
"Oh! virtue is very easy," — upon which a poor 
little woman (it was on board a Rhine boat) whose 
whole life had been one of temptation, hearing the 
remark, walked away, with her sweet, though care- 
worn face, her charming petite rounded figure and 
elastic step, and, heaving a deep sigh, said to her- 
self, u Oh, but virtue is not easy!" And so it is; 
and so it ever will be ! 

" What's done we partly may compute, 
But know not what's resisted." 

August — September, 1869. 



2i8 ON TOLERATION. 

Note. — I have said in this essay (p. 197) that " I would not give 
much for a woman who is not fond of dress," and more to the same 
effect laudatory of this supposed " woman's weakness." It is sug- 
gested that this passage might be regarded as a plea for extravagance 
in dress, which, doubtless, is among the besetting evils of the time. 
But to be fond of dress and to be extravagant in dress are two very 
different things. Women who are extravagant in dress are often 
very careless and wasteful ; they show that they are not really fond 
of dress by the manner in which they treat it, casting aside or 
destroying their dresses, one after another, as the whim seizes 
them; whilst others, uniformly careful and neat, spend only half the 
money, and make twice as good an appearance. This is the come- 
liness of which I have spoken in the text, which is only another 
name for carefulness, and which bespeaks, as I have said, in 
women, orderly habits and a desire to please. But it is shocking 
to think of the amount of money wasted by others owfine dresses, 
without the attainment, after all, of the great object of being ivell 
dressed. The best-dressed woman is the one who dresses most 
according to her station, and who evinces her fondness for dress 
by taking the best care of it. — (1870.) 



REST. 

I HAD a long illness at the end of last year, — 
not dangerous, not very painful, but compelling 
me, as an indispensable aid to recovery, to keep 
steadfastly to my bed. Such a mischance had not 
befallen me for twenty-five years. I am habitually 
an early riser, spending little time abed, and it 
seemed strange to me at first, with a strangeness 
not unmingled with self-reproach, to hear the cry 
of the milkman from between the sheets ; but this 
soon wore away, and there came over me a calm 
satisfaction with my lot, — something more than 
mere patience. And now I look back to the time 
with a feeling almost of regret, as though I should 
not much deplore the necessity of spending it all 
over again. It is true that all the conditions were 
in my favor. I had physicians as wise as they 
were kind, the best and brightest of nurses, and 
the sympathy of a few loving friends. And I had 
what I had not known for many years, something 
nearly approaching to — Rest. 

I had a fanciful notion at the time — and I have 
not ceased yet from the indulgence of the thought 
— that the " good Fairy" which watches over me, 

(219) 



220 REST. 

seeing that I would not of my own motion cease 
from labor, had purposely prostrated me, that I 
might rest mind and body from the ceaseless work 
of years, and rescue what little good might still 
be left in me for use in a later day. Not long ago, 
some papers were written, in a popular periodical, 
on " Enforced Pauses in Life." I could not, at the 
time, make a pause in life to read them ; but I was 
much struck by the title, and I often feel an ex- 
treme amount of thankfulness for the occurrence 
and recurrence of these enforced pauses. They 
may last for only five minutes, or they may last 
for an hour, a day, a week, a month. It is impos- 
sible to calculate the good that they do. In the 
midst of a hard bout of writing-work, just as I am, 
perhaps, getting into a state of congestion, I miss 
a certain paper, or I cannot find a certain book. 
I am compelled to rise from my chair, to change 
my-position, to go into another room, to spend a 
quarter of an hour, perhaps, in an active search, 
which may, after all, be unsuccessful. But the 
labor has not been labor lost ; I am all the better 
for it; there has been some rest of the brain. Then 
again, there is a stoppage on my line of railway : 
I am detained for an hour on my way to business 
I spend the time between looking out of windo 
and reading the advertisements in my newspaper 
I take in a succession of entirely new ideas, not one 
of which may be of much value : but I have rested 
for awhile; perhaps, I have slept a little in the 



i • 
is. 



THE SICK-BED. 221 

course of my detention. I have been ordered to 
halt and to stand at ease ; I have been compelled 
to pause, whether I would or not; and, however 
much I have chafed at the commencement, I have 
always acknowledged, at last, that the hour has 
been well spent. For rest is a thing to be done, as 
well as work ; and if we are disinclined to do it, we 
should be thankful that the " Providence which 
shapes our ends" sometimes compels us thereto, in 
spite of ourselves. But for these occasional com- 
pulsions, I might, long ere this, have been in a 
churchyard or a mad-house. At least, I am con- 
vinced — and the conviction brings a strong feeling 
of gratitude in its train — that, if I had always had 
my own way, I should not now be writing this 
essay, enjoying the soft summer air, and the sweet 
odor of the roses in my garden. What we are 
wont to call mischances are commonly blessings 
in disguise. And so I thought that, as these 
small pauses had not been enough for me, it had 
been beneficently ordained that I should be laid 
in my bed for six weeks and ordered to take my 
rest. 

So I took it, not merely uncomplainingly, but 
in the main gratefully. And I have been thinking 
that perhaps nothing but a decided attack of illness, 
placing me under the strict discipline of the faculty, 
would have had the same beneficial effect. We 
are wont to coquet with slight ailments. Admo- 
nitions of the gentler kind are too often unheeded. 



222 REST. 

Nature benignantly indicates the time to pause; 
but man, stiff-necked and presumptuous, too often 
disregards these warnings, and, instead of ceasing 
to work, works badly against the grain. Then, 
again, as to voluntary cessation from labor, there 
are conditions to be observed with respect to the 
perfect realization of the idea of a holiday, which 
some men, by reason partly of their natural dispo- 
sitions, partly of their adventitious surroundings, 
can rarely fulfill. The nominal holiday often 
brings with it anything but genuine rest. Too 
frequently a man's business pursues him into the 
country, haunts him at the seaside, crosses the 
Channel with him, sits upon his back wheresoever 
he goes. " This is his own fault," it may be said. 
Nay, rather it is his misfortune. It is the result 
commonly of a conscientious feeling that what a 
man can do he ought to do with all the power that 
is in him, — and that he has no right, for the sake 
of personal ease and enjoyment, to lose sight of his 
appointed work, unless he be perfectly assured in 
his own mind that it can be done equally well by 
others in his absence. I have heard much of the 
" happy faculty" of getting thoroughly rid of the 
burden of work, "shaking it off" is the favorite 
expression ; I do not doubt that it is a very happy 
faculty to the possessor, but the happiness may be 
confined to himself. I do not wish to be misunder- 
stood, and, therefore, I must discriminate a little in 
this place. There are times and seasons when it 






"SHAKING-OFF BUSINESS." 223 

would be a mere waste of self not to get rid of all 
cares of business, all thoughts of one's work. If 
one can do nothing, it is needless self-torture to 
kick against the pricks of the inevitable. There 
can be no self-reproach where there is no power to 
do otherwise. 

What I mean is best shown by a familiar illus- 
tration. Whatever may be the business to be 
done, whatever the difficulties to be surmounted, 
whatever the cares and anxieties attending them, 
when business hours are over on Saturday even- 
ing, when the last post has come in and gone out, 
a man feels that he can do nothing more till Mon- 
day morning. It is out of his own hands. God's 
law and man's law alike decree his quiescence. 
To endeavor to cast out, during that blessed in- 
terval, all corroding thoughts, is surely the duty 
of all of us, as it is a privilege to be suffered to 
accomplish it. And I am disposed to think that 
there are few to whom this privilege is not merci- 
fully vouchsafed. I have heard men, upon whom 
the burden of the world has sat by no means 
lightly, declare that they always sleep better on 
Saturday night and wake later on Sunday morning 
than at any other time of the week, and that 
although Monday morning amply revenges itself, 
the sabbatical repose of the dies non strengthens 
them for the struggles of the coming week and 
keeps them from breaking down. I shall speak 
of this more fully in another place. I desire 



224 REST. 

here only to illustrate the difference between en- 
forced and willful quiescence. Thus to " shake off 
business," when no business can be done, is a 
privilege if it come naturally to us, and wisdom if 
it be attained by discipline of the mind. I can see 
no use in opening letters of business on Saturday 
night, that cannot be answered and acted upon 
until Monday morning. To do so may give one 
a troubled Sunday, without helping the matter in 
hand. But when the banks and the marts and the 
exchanges are open, when men are buying and 
selling, borrowing and lending, when the public 
offices are in full departmental activity, when states- 
men are meeting and legislators are babbling, and 
judges are sitting on the judgment-seat, it may be 
neither a privilege to be able to shake off business, 
nor wisdom to encourage the faculty. To lose a 
single post, to be half an hour late at a certain 
place, may make all the difference between suc- 
cess and failure. That which brings ease of mind 
is the knowledge that we have done our best, — 
that it is not in our power to do anything more 
than we have done, or differently from what we 
have done. But there is the bitterness of self- 
reproach in the thought that if we had not yielded 
to some infirmity or some temptation, some self- 
indulgence of the moment, causing us to lose a 
train or to miss a post, — or, on a larger scale of 
pleasure-seeking, to be at a distance from the seat 
of business, when we might be close at hand, — 



DISTURBING INFLUENCES. 2 2$ 

everything might have turned out differently, to 
our contentment instead of to our despair. 

We cannot, unfortunately, get over the fact that 
all the tendencies of the age are the very reverse 
of favorable to Rest. I should be a mere Goth, an 
outer barbarian of the worst kind, if I did not thank- 
fully acknowledge the benefits which the present 
generation derives from the almost magical rapidity 
with which both thought and matter are conveyed 
from one spot to another. Communication by post 
has been wonderfully improved, and the electric 
telegraph is a great institution. But posts and 
telegraphs are among the disturbing accessories 
of life ; and a man connected with business of any 
kind, official, professional, or commercial, can 
hardly expect to enjoy anything like genuine 
rest, so long as he is within reach of the post or 
the telegraph. The telegraph now, under post- 
office development, is invading the remotest dis- 
tricts. Happening some weeks ago to visit an 
obscure village or townlet in South Wales, I was 
surprised to see the posts and wires following the 
rural road, miles away from the station, and thus 
bringing London within a few minutes' distance of 
my retreat. In a little time, I suppose that there 
will be no place in which the telegraph cannot find 
you out. I have thought sometimes, in my search 
after rest, whether I would not, on leaving London 
for an autumnal holiday, leave directions behind 
me to forward no letters or telegrams, or, as a cer- 

*5 



226 REST. 

tain preventive to the dispatch of all unwelcome 
missives, to leave no address behind me. I envy, 
if I do not applaud, those who can do such things, 
— who can thus cut themselves off from the outside 
world altogether, and feel no misgivings of danger. 
Of the faculty of abstraction I have spoken above. 
I am now writing of the permissive or preventive 
circumstances. And it unfortunately happens that 
the very men to whom perfect repose is most essen- 
tial are those whom hostile circumstances rarely 
suffer to enjoy it. They may go to distant places 
in the holidays, but they cannot deny the ap- 
proaches of the post and the telegraph; and if 
they did, their apprehensions and anxieties and 
self-reproaches would give them as little genuine 
rest as their letters and their messages and the 
office-boxes which are sent down to them. It is 
best, therefore, I am disposed to think, as most 
contributing to rest in such circumstances, cheer- 
fully to face your business, to do such work, or to 
issue such orders for its doing, as will keep the 
wheels going without accidents ; to get over it 
every day as expeditiously as possible ; and then 
to give yourself up to recreation and amusement. 
Change of air and change of scene may do much 
for a man, and it is no small thing to be able to 
work by an open window, with the fresh air of the 
departing summer breathing upon him, and fair 
fields and smiling flowers to meet his eyes, when 
he lifts them from his papers. Besides, there is 



FREEDOM FROM INTERRUPTION. 



227 



a blessed immunity from the distracting, at times 
almost maddening, interruptions to which, at the 
headquarters of your business, you are always 
subject, — legitimate interruptions from clerks and 
clients, and illegitimate incursions and intrusions 
from the idle world, barbarians regardless of the 
value of time, coming on their own private business 
or on no business at all, impervious to hints of all 
kinds, from covert appeals to ill-disguised re- 
proaches. There is gain in the direction of rest 
from the absence of these disturbing influences, 
which is sufficient answer to those who thanklessly 
exclaim, "I might as well have remained at office." 
Better, again I say, under these happier conditions, 
to do one's work, than to be accessible to con- 
tinually recurring apprehensions of disaster and the 
stingings of a lively conscience. 

It is the absence, I am inclined to think, of these 
sharp twinges of self-reproach, which, to a man 
encumbered with the affairs of the world, makes a 
period of sickness the nearest approach to a period 
of rest to which he is ever likely to attain, until he 
has rid himself of all fleshly encumbrances. There 
is something very comforting in utter helplessness. 
It is God's will that you should for awhile be in- 
active — and there's an end of it. Satisfied that all 
that comes from the Almighty disposer of events 
is for the best, you resign yourself to his bidding, 
as a child ; and with this childlike confidence come 
childlike tastes and inclinations, and something like 



228 REST. 

a childlike state of intelligence, — the mind, like the 
body, eschewing strong diet and delighting in the 
mildest nutriment. I am one of those who, in 
seasons of health and strength, live upon meat and 
wine. I eschew delicate cates and meek beverages. 
I have a horror of slops. I thrive best upon heroic 
aliment. But there are pauses in men's lives when 
the heroic is at a discount. Mind and body are 
alike in this. At such times I have found solace in 
the perusal of books of the milder sort, which in 
full health I should have regarded as the most in- 
sipid of all possible reading, — books of the hum- 
drum order, such as meek domestic stories about 
goody people, who neither do nor suffer anything 
that is not done or suffered by people of one's own 
acquaintance every day of the year. I would not 
class among these books such a work as Miss 
Martineau's Decrbrook, which is good reading at 
all times. I read it once, for the second or third 
time, during a severe attack of the gout, under a 
continual sense of gratitude to the writer. It is, 
indeed, a great book, with as much meaning in it 
as Bulwer's Rienzi, to which in my mind I have 
frequently compared it. Dr. Hope is a sort of 
Rienzi of middle-class life in England. Widely 
different as are the costumes, the scenic effects, all 
the external accessories, there is in both the same 
moral groundwork, — the same truth wrought out 
by different means. The variableness of popular 
favor is finely illustrated by each writer. But I 



MILD READING. 



229 



could read one when I could not read the other. 
Indeed, I tried, on my sick-bed, last year, to read 
the Last of the Barons, and I found that the food 
was too strong for me. But I read with pleasure, 
at the time, some mild stories of everyday life at 
home, of which I do not now remember a word, — 
stories that take a man placidly just a very little 
way out of the environs of self, and awaken a 
calm, genial, sympathetic interest, which is gently 
stimulating to the system, without disturbing one's 
rest. Even children's books are sometimes pleasant 
reading at such times, — especially schoolboy stories, 
— such, for instance, as Charles Dickens's Old 
Cheeseman; for, in truth, a sick man is little more 
than a child. At such periods, indeed, there is 
much pleasure in going back some forty years to 
one's schoolboy days, and wondering what has be- 
come of one's old schoolfellows, — what they have 
done in the world, what they are like. Some, of 
course, have turned up at odd times and in odd 
places, with friendly recognitions ; and what delight 
has there been in the renovata jnventus! — what 
wonderful Rest in the interchange of old re- 
miniscences, — the revivification of boyish jokes 
between the Dean, the Queen's Counsel, and the 
Chief of an Official Department, fondly remem- 
bered by each other, with pleasant memories of 
fair young faces and light agile figures, and 
buoyant spirits that nothing could check! Such 
reunions are worth many a hard and toilsome 



230 



REST. 



passage in life, and the more so that they com- 
monly come upon us unawares. But I was minded 
to speak of these blessed reunions in the spirit, 
not in the flesh, — wishing to say that, when neces- 
sitated to cease from labor, and to find some 
pleasant occupation for the mind, I have often 
derived, from reminiscences of old times, especially 
of those embraced by the academic period, infinite 
solace and repose. At such times, in the life- 
pauses of illness, or in intervals of broken rest 
(which, as we grow older, become unfortunately 
more frequent), I have lived over again and again 
those blessed periods of 

" Youth, 
When life was luxury, and friendship truth," 

and have never become weary of the retrospect. 
Strange it is that these memories of our early days 
grow more vivid as we advance in life. Perhaps 
it is that, as the fiercer excitements of the heyday 
of manhood subside under the influence of age 
and infirmity, we live less in the present, and give 
ourselves more leisure to review the past. Our 
first affections, out of the family circle, are com- 
monly given to some school-friend ; and though, 
in after-years, our paths may be far apart, and we 
may lose sight altogether of the first objects of 
our love, an enduring impression is made upon the 
heart, which Time cannot efface. Perhaps, on the 
whole, pleasant as are the meetings of which I 



SICKNESS A RENOVATOR. 



231 



have spoken, it is best for such school -friends 
(speaking of them as something distinct from mere 
sch.oo\-fellows) not to meet as adults, — not to have 
anything to mar the mind-picture of the bright- 
faced, supple-limbed boy, all aglow with healthful 
exercise and innocent excitement, shouldering his 
bat and walking down to the scorer to learn how 
many runs he has made. He may have gone the 
right way, or he may have gone the wrong way. 
He may have developed into a bishop, or he may 
have sunk into a sot. In either case, he is not our 
little Bright-face ; and it is a pity that the remi- 
niscence should be spoiled by any disfigurements 
of mature reality. 

It may appear to some, and not unreasonably, 
that this notion of mine, that for a man, in the 
full swing of business, to realize anything like 
an approximation to rest, he must be prostrated 
on a bed of sickness, is not unlike the idea of 
Elia's Chinaman, that it was necessary to burn 
down a house to obtain the luxury of roast-pig. 
Perhaps it is. But there is nothing of which I 
am more assured, in my own mind, than that, 
in the midst of an active, perhaps an over-active, 
career (I speak of cerebral, not muscular, activi- 
ties), to be laid aside by no will of your own, but 
by the ruling of One who better knows what is 
good for you, may be in your case, as it has 
been in thousands of other cases, the salvation 
both of your body and of your mind. If I were 



232 



REST. 



the ruling principle of a life-assurance society, I 
should put the question to the would-be assurer, 
" When did you have your last illness ?" with a 
view to ascertain the danger rather of unbroken 
health (or the simulacrum of it) than the sup- 
posed warnings of occasional attacks of sickness. 
I should be always suspicious of men who are 
" never ill." I have seen such men snap suddenly, 
for want of that relief from incessant tension which, 
to some natures, can only come unbidden. The 
unbending of the bow is forced upon us when we 
are really sick ; and it is bountifully provided in 
such genuine disorderments that with the debility 
of the body engendered at such times should come 
also a corresponding debility of mind, or rather 
a certain obtuseness thereof, an absence of that 
sensitiveness to external influences which is in- 
separable from perfect, or even slightly impaired, 
health ; and from this absence of the vivida vis of 
other times comes the nearest approach to Rest 
which active men are capable of enjoying. And 
next to this, in their salutary effects on overworked 
man, are the conditions of the Sabbath. 

I have spoken incidentally of the Christian's 
day of rest, and promised to return to the subject. 
I think with a shudder, sometimes, of what life 
would be without Sunday, — if day after day the 
great wheel of the world went round with its 
ceaseless clatter, never a rest in motion, never a 
pause in sound. These are mere secular essays ; 



SUNDA YS. 



233 



they do not aspire even to the dignity of lay- 
sermons. What am I that I should dare to write 
otherwise than as a worlding? I speak of the 
Sabbath only in its original meaning, as a word 
that signifies Rest. And in this sense it is by 
most men, and ought to be by all, esteemed as 
the very greatest of all the blessings which the 
Almighty benevolence has bestowed upon man. 
The worst Sabbath-breaker of all is the ingrate 
who is not thankful when the Sabbath comes 
round. He may go to church three times a day, 
and be austere in all outward observances, but he 
breaks the Sabbath in his heart if he rejoices when 
it is over. There are many kinds of worship, and 
I am humbly disposed to think that the giving of 
thanks is not the least acceptable of them. If it 
be true that laborare est orare, we are praying 
during six days of the week, and may devote the 
seventh to praise. He who thoroughly enjoys his 
day of rest lives from morning to night in a state 
of thankfulness to the Almighty; the incense of 
praise is continually rising from his heart. I 
do not envy the man who does not hail the 
advent of Sunday, and rejoice in the Rest which 
it vouchsafes. 

I am not forgetful that among those who have 
professed this want of appreciation of the great 
weekly restorative, for which I am so devoutly 
thankful, once lived and loved one, of whom to 
write at all is to write tenderly and affectionately, 



234 



REST. 



— that gentle hero, that Titanic weakling, Charles 
Lamb. It was not well of him to write, in one of 
the most delightful of his Essays, " I had my Sun- 
days to myself; but Sundays, admirable as the 
institution of them is for purposes of worship, are 
for that very reason the worst adapted for days of 
unbending and recreation. In particular there is 
a gloom for me attendant upon city Sundays, a 
weight in the air. I miss the cheerful cries of 
London, the music and the ballad-singers, the buzz 
and stirring music of the streets. Those eternal 
bells depress me. The closed shops repel me. 
Prints, pictures, all the glittering and endless suc- 
cession of knacks and gewgaws, and ostenta- 
tiously-displayed wares of tradesmen, which make 
a weekday saunter through the less busy parts of 
the metropolis so delightful, are shut out. No 
bookstalls deliciously to idle over. No busy faces 
to recreate the idle man, who contemplates them 
ever passing by, — the very face of business a charm 
by contrast to his temporary relaxation from it. 
Nothing to be seen but unhappy countenances, or 
half-happy at best, — of emancipated 'prentices and 
little tradesfolk, with here and there a servant-maid 
who has got leave to go out, who, slaving all the 
week, with the habit has lost almost the capacity 
of enjoying a free hour, and livelily expressing 
the hollowness of a day's pleasuring. The very 
strollers in the fields on that day look anything 
but comfortable." Half serious, half sportive, and 



L OND ON SUN DA YS. 235 

wholly wrong ! It appears to me, too, that there 
is something of an anachronism in it. Written in 
the character of the " Superannuated Man," it re- 
lates to a past period of existence, when the writer 
had "a desk in Mincing Lane," — otherwise in 
Leadenhall Street, — and yet it seems to be imbued 
with the spirit of superannuation, and to express 
rather the sentiments of the " idle man" than of 
the busy one. Perhaps he would not have written 
in this strain whilst he was harnessed to the go-cart 
of the Accounts' Office of the East India Company, 
and had only his Sundays for holidays. It is surely 
abundant compensation for the closed bookstalls 
and the silent hurdygurdies, that you can rise in 
the morning with the delightful sense that there 
is nothing that you are compelled to do. If it be 
any luxury to you to lie late abed, you may do it. 
You need not look at your watch every ten minutes, 
lest you should miss the train (in Mr. Lamb's day 
it was the coach). You need not grudge yourself 
an extra quarter of an hour over your breakfast. 
You need not be disquieted by the thought that 
you have got your slippers on instead of your 
boots (in Mr. Lamb's time the disquieting thought 
was connected with the buttoning of the gaiters). 
In a word, you need not be in a hurry. Is this no 
small thing in itself? Is it not rest, — rest from 
that unceasing battle with Time that we are waging 
all through the weekdays ? For my own part, it 
is the quietude of Sunday that I so much enjoy, — 



236 REST. 

the cessation of the postman's rap, of the trades- 
man's call, of the street-cries, of the references to 
BradsJiaw. I can sit still when I like, I can sleep 
when I like, and I have time to be thankful. 

It is true that I commonly spend my Sundays 
a little way in the country, or, rather, a little out 
of town, for in these days of perpetual aedification 
the country is not easily reached. If you pitch 
your tent where there is a pleasant prospect of 
green fields and orchards, and you can see the 
cows grazing from your windows at all times and 
the apple-blossoms whitening the ground beneath 
them in the spring and early summer, the specula- 
tive builder soon plants opposite to you a steam- 
engine and a sawing-machine, exorcises houses, 
with demoniacal rapidity, from the bowels of the 
earth, and blocks out all of nature but the skies. 
There is some good, be it said, even in this ; for it 
is a blessing, bountifully tending to rest, to be suf- 
fered to know the worst. When all is done that 
can be done to your despite, there is nothing more 
for you to fear or fidget about ; and it is better, 
perhaps, to know that you can never see those 
fields and apple-blossoms again from your win- 
dows, than to live haunted by continual apprehen- 
sions of losing them. We soon get reconciled, as 
I have before said, to the inevitable. I purpose to 
say something presently about the rest that comes 
from knowing the worst. I" am now, when not 
hindered by my digressional infirmity, writing of 



DELIGHT IN SUNDA Y. 



237 



the blessed Rest of Sundays. And I was proceed- 
ing to say that though now, in spite of the builder, 
I can sit on Sundays under my vine and saunter 
among flowers, it has not been always so ; and that 
I have spent years of Sundays in town, under 
nearly every residential condition known to our 
middle-class humanity, — in comfortable family 
dwelling-houses, in lodging-house " drawing-room 
floors," in chambers of Inns of Court, ay, and in 
the city proper, hard by that so-called "Mincing 
Lane" whereof Mr. Lamb discourses ; and yet I 
protest that I have never failed to rise from my bed 
lighter and happier on Sundays than on any one 
of the six weekdays. Not that I make wry faces 
at my work. We are upon the very best of terms 
with each other. Indeed, I might in this case 
adapt to my own uses the fine old chivalrous senti- 
ment, and say, — 

I should not love thee, Work, so well, 
Loved I not Sunday more. 

My selfish delight in Sunday is, that I am not 
compelled to do any work on that day, if I do not 
wish it, and that I ought not if I would ; but there 
is a joy beyond this in seeing others going out for 
their Sunday holidays, in their best clothes, looking 
clean and bright and fresh, and, whatever Mr. Lamb 
may say to the contrary, with a keen sense of the 
coming enjoyment written on their faces. I like to 
speculate on what they are going to do, as I see 



238 REST. 

them starting when the morning air is fresh and 
the sun not very high above the house-tops, 
wondering whether they are going to see their 
old parents in the country (mayhap in the Work- 
house) or a daughter in service, or only to get a 
little fresh air away from the smoke of London. 
And there were other pleasant and suggestive 
sights as seen from my chamber-windows, not the 
least of which was this : — I was wont to see on 
Sunday mornings, in the bright summer-time, a 
little stream of people flowing, under an archway, 
from Lincoln's Inn Fields towards Covent Garden, 
and returning by the same channel. They went 
empty-handed and they returned full ; each one, 
man or woman, carrying — I might almost write 
hugging — a pot of flowers; a geranium, a fuchsia, 
a verbena, or some other freely-blossoming plant. 
It mystified me for some time ; but I learned after- 
wards that there was an early sale of flowers on 
Sunday mornings in Covent Garden, and that pur- 
chases were to be made more cheaply at that hour 
than at any other. And it pleased me to think 
that a part of the wages paid on Saturday evening 
had been put aside for these Sunday-morning pur- 
chases ; and though this buying and selling might, 
in the eyes of rigid Sabbatarians, be held, in some 
sort, as a violation of the Fourth Commandment, 
I could not help thinking that the Recording 
Angel might well drop a tear upon the page that 
registered the offense. For the love of flowers, 



GARDENING. 239 

especially in sorely-tried Londoners, is a virtue in 
itself; and it greatly engenders Rest. 

I would recommend every man, in the autumn 
of his life, to take to gardening, if he has not 
already experienced its pleasures. Of all occupa- 
tions in the world it is the one which best combines 
repose and activity. It is rest-in-work or work-in- 
rest. It is not idleness; it is not stagnation; and 
yet it is perfect quietude. Like all things mortal, 
it has its failures and its disappointments, and there 
are some things hard to understand. But it is 
never without its rewards. And, perhaps, if there 
were nothing but successful cultivation, the aggre- 
gate enjoyment would be less. It is better for the 
occasional shadows that come over the scene. The 
discipline, too, is most salutary. It tries one's 
patience and it tries one's faith. The perpetual 
warfare, that seems ever to be going on between 
the animal and the vegetable world, is something 
strange and perplexing. It is hard to understand 
why the beautiful tender blossoms and the delicate 
fresh leaflets of my rose-trees should be covered 
with green flies and destroyed as soon as they are 
born. It is a mystery which I cannot solve; but I 
know that there is a meaning in it, and that it is all 
decreed for good, only that I am too ignorant to 
fathom it. And even in the worst of seasons there 
is far more to reward and encourage than to dis- 
hearten and to disappoint. There is no day of the 
year without something to afford tranquil pleasure 



240 



REST. 



to the cultivator of flowers, something on which the 
mind may rest (using the word in its double sense) 
with profit and delight. If there is no new surprise, 
no fresh discovery for you, there is always some- 
thing to be done. " The garden is a constant source 
of amusement to us both," wrote Dr. Arnold in 
one of his delightful letters, — he was writing of 
himself and wife; "there are always some little 
alterations to be made, some few spots where an 
additional shrub or two would be ornamental, 
something coming into blossom ; so that I can 
always delight to go round and see how things are 
going on." In the spring and summer there is 
some pleasure-giving change visible every morning, 
something to fulfill and something to excite expec- 
tation. And even in the winter, flower-culture has 
its delights. If you have a green-house or con- 
servatory, no matter how small, you have an in- 
doors garden, in which you may watch the same 
changes and enjoy the same delights. And if you 
have not, you may still do something to preserve 
your nurslings during the rigors of the hybernal 
season. Indeed, there are few states of life in which 
floriculture is not an available enjoyment. To rich 
and to poor it is a blessing equally accessible. "As 
gardening," it was observed by Sir William Temple, 
who has had a new lease of life in one of the best 
of Macaulay's Essays, " has been the inclination 
of kings and the choice of philosophers, so it has 
been the common favorite of public and private 



WINDOW-GARDENING. 24 1 

men, a pleasure of the greatest and the care of 
the meanest; and indeed an employment and a 
possession for which no man is too high or too 
low." I am disposed, indeed, to think that to men 
of low estate it yields greater joys than to those 
who hail from high places. I have got a little 
garden about the size of a rich man's dining-table. 
I am as fond of it, and, when the roses are in 
bloom, as proud of it, too, as the Duke can be of 
his world-renowned Chatsworth. I do not suppose 
that if I could bring as many acres as I please 
under floral cultivation, and have as many gardeners 
as I choose to hire, with another Paxton at the 
head of them, I should derive from them all a 
tenth part of the enjoyment that is now vouchsafed 
to me by my little strip of suburban soil. Indeed, 
in that ducal case, I should not be suffered to 
garden ; I must be gardened for : they would be 
the gardener's roses, not mine; I should have 
merely the privilege of looking at them. And 
it is essential to any real enjoyment of a garden 
that you should be an autocrat in it, that you 
should do much of the work yourself, and have 
a particular knowledge of almost each individual 
flower. 

But there are lowlier gardeners even than I ; 
there are gardens to which my diminutive domain 
is a Chatsworth, — gardens limited to the capacity 
of a window-sill. I honor those window-gardeners, 
especially those who dwell in towns, in narrow 

16 



242 REST. 






streets or murky alleys, and whose homes are made 
beautiful by the smiles of the flowers in their 
windows, — gardeners such as I have spoken of 
above, as seen from my windows in Lincoln's Inn, 
carrying their gardens in their hands, beautiful off- 
shoots of the great garden which ever flourishes 
between Long Acre and the Strand. And even of 
this window- gardening there are many degrees, — 
descending even down to one delicate plant, reared 
perhaps from a slip beneficently given by a neigh- 
bor, in a fragment of a broken water-jug. There 
seems to be something of the old Paradisiacal 
beatitude in these modest cultivations. I saw 
yesterday, as I journeyed homeward-bound, after 
my day's work, to the station, whence I take 
train to my suburb, a woman at a second-floor 
window in Westminster (it is a house ancient and 
decrepit, doubtless doomed to speedy deletion) 
amidst a perfect Eden of many-colored and many- 
shaped flowers and creepers, picking off the dead 
leaves here and there. Neither youth nor beauty 
physically belonged to her; but the picture was 
not without a suggestiveness of youth and beauty; 
for the love of flowers keeps the heart young, and 
the greater the difficulty of indulging that love the 
greater the moral beauty of success in the culti- 
vation of a purifying taste. I could readily asso- 
ciate with it the idea of a background, behind that 



festooned window, in which, notwithstanding all 



the ordinary troubles and disturbances of metro- 






STATESMANSHIP IN THE GARDEN. 



243 



politan work, there is, at appointed times, a fine air 
of repose, — a soothing benignity of Rest* 

But I am minded, having thus spoken of these 
lower strata of floriculture, to return for a little 
space to the higher. If I were to give way to the 
inclination to discourse upon this subject, and to 
illustrate it by examples drawn from ancient and 
modern history, showing how the greatest men of 
all ages have sought and found Rest in the con- 
templation of fields and flowers, — the inexhausti- 
ble works of that benignant Nature, which "never 
doth betray the heart that is her own," — I should 
require more sheets than I can find pages for my 
commentary. But I have been recently reading 
Lord Russell's Life of Charles Fox, and do not 
know any more beautiful illustration of the love of 
Rest than is to be found in the story of the great 
statesman's retirement and the correspondence 
which accompanies it: — "At a period," writes 
Lord Russell, "when the prospects of office nearly 
vanished from his sight, when calumny loved to 
paint him as a man of disordered ambition and 
criminal designs, he was busy in the study of 
Homer, or lounging carelessly through his garden 

* Since this was written, I have found a charming illustration of 
window-gardening in that unfinished work of Charles Dickens, 
which it so saddens one to read, — the window-garden cultivated 
by the retired naval lieutenant in Staple Inn, who " thought he'd 
feel his way to the command of a limited estate by beginning in 
boxes." 



244 REST. 

and expressing to his beloved nephew the full 
sense of his happiness and content. The trees and 
the flowers, the birds and the fresh breezes, gave 
him an intense enjoyment, which those who knew 
his former life of politics and pleasure could hardly 
have imagined. To the capacious benevolence 
which longed to strike the chain from the African 
slave, he joined a daily practice of all the charities 
of life and a perception of the beautiful in nature, 
in literature and in art, which was a source of con- 
stant enjoyment. With a simplicity of manners 
rare in great statesmen, he united views the most 
profound, and a feeling heart which calumny could 
not embitter, nor years make cold, nor the world 
harden." The enjoyment of rest, which he derived 
from the sights and sounds of nature, from the 
beauty of the flowers and the songs of the birds, 
was intense; and with this went hand-in-hand 
the cultivation of literature, especially in its less 
laborious forms. He was writing history, but he 
turned aside to revel in poetry; and from his 
poetical studies he was diverted, at times, by his 
inquiries as to the season of nightingale-singing in 
different parts of the country. But, in the midst 
of all this, he had his misgivings. He could not 
help those qualms of conscience which rose up at 
odd times, and suggested that he ought to be at 
work again. 

Take the following from one of his letters in 
1795, as illustrative of the great struggle within 



CHARLES FOX IN RETIREMENT. 245 

between the sense of duty and the longing for 
Rest: — "As to myself, I grow every day to think 
less of public affairs ; possibly your coming home 
and taking a part in them might make me again 
more alive about them, but I doubt even that 
The bills of this year appear to me to be a finish- 
ing stroke to everything like a spirit of liberty; 
and though the country did show some spirit whilst 
they were depending, yet I fear it is only a tempo- 
rary feeling which they have quite forgotten. I 
wish I could be persuaded that it is right to quit 
public business, for I should like it to a degree 
that I cannot express; but I cannot yet think that 
it is not a duty to persevere. One may be of 
opinion that persevering is of no use ; but ought a 
man who has engaged himself to the public to 
trust so entirely to a speculation of this sort as to 
go out of the common road, and to desert (for so 
it would be called) the public service ? .... I 
think it can scarcely be right. But as for wishes, 
no one ever wished anything more. I am per- 
fectly happy in the country. I have quite re- 
sources enough to employ my mind, and the 
great resource of all, literature. I am fonder 
of literature every day." — [April 12, 1795.] And 
again, some years later: — "My feeling is this, — 
that notwithstanding nightingales, flowers, litera- 
ture, history, etc., all which, however, I conceive 
to be good and substantial reasons for staying 
here, I would nevertheless go to town if I saw 



246 



REST. 



any chance of my going being serviceable to the 
public, or (which, in my view of the case, is the 
same thing) to the party ; which I love both as a 
part} 7- , and on account of many of the principal 
individuals who compose it. I feel myself quite 
sure that this is not now the case ; and that if I 
were to go the best I could hope for would be that 
I should do no mischief." — \Ap?il 19, 1801.] The 
love of repose, of flowers and singing-birds, had 
grown upon him in the interval, but still ever 
and anon came goadings of self-reproach, and 
the much-coveted rest seemed to be continually 
slipping away from him. Thus, three years after- 
wards, he wrote, " I am going up to town to- 
morrow, to stay I know not how many weeks. I 
dislike it to a degree you can hardly conceive, but 
I feel it is right, and resolve to do it handsomely. 
. . . . Nightingales not come yet, and it will be 
well, if I do not quite miss hearing them this 
spring ; but I will do it so handsomely that I hope 
you will hear from your other correspondents that 
I have quite turned my mind to politics again, 
and am as eager as in former days. Pray remem- 
ber to inquire at what time nightingales usually 
appear and sing where you are." — [April g, 1804.] 
There is something very pleasant in this last 
touch of nature. The nightingales again ! What 
a change from those soft songsters to the obstrep- 
erousness of the House of Commons! There are 
many, doubtless, whom we are wont, in these days, 



DELIGHTS OF LITERA TURE. 247 

to think self-seeking and ambitious, because they 
continue to take part in the strife of public affairs, 
even when health and strength are failing and the 
voice is growing weak. We seldom take account 
of the sacrifices which they make. How many 
would give up place and power if they did not feel 
within them a strong sense of duty, compelling 
them to listen to the calls of their country ! No 
one, who has tried both, doubts for a moment that 
Literature is more delightful than Politics. What 
Rest our two great party-leaders must have found 
in their Homeric studies and translations ! What 
repose must have been the lot of that other states- 
man who wrote the Life of Fox above quoted, and 
that other life, in which he passed from politics to 
poetry, and manifested as keen an appreciation of 
the one as of the other! And who can fathom the 
depths of that intense amusement and recreation 
which another party-leader, sui generis, must have 
experienced, when he hoaxed and hocussed the 
world by publishing a fashionable novel, intended 
to satirize the perverted literary taste and to gauge 
the literary flunkyism of the age ? I think it must 
have added half a dozen good working-years to 
his life. He has achieved many successes, but 
none equal to this last. I do not say that I 
applaud it. He had before laid bare the rotten- 
ness of party politics, and it was still less pleasant 
to see the literary criticism of the nineteenth cen- 
tury thus shown to be a pretentious sham. But it 



248 REST. 

will have its uses. My roses are not less sweet 
because the soil from which they grow is manured 
with the vilest offal. If this stupendous hoax, 
which must have shaken the sides of Beaconsfield 
right merrily, should, as we apprehend it will, 
teach criticism a little more caution and conscien- 
tiousness, it will not have been played out in vain. 
I have spoken incidentally, above, of the Rest 
which comes from knowing or suffering the worst, 
— the quiet that follows an explosion. It is like 
the stillness now succeeding the thunderstorm, 
amidst which some of these lines have been written 
in the early morning. Almost every one, in some 
shape or other, has experienced, after a long period 
of painful doubt and suspense and anxiety, — of 
those fears which cling to you in the day, which 
haunt your sleep, and oppress you with deadly 
sickness at the " shuddering dawn," — the infinite 
relief of the dreaded it having actually come upon 
you. There is an end, then, of all your strugglings 
to escape your doom, — all your writhings and 
wrestlings, — all the miserable turmoil and excite- 
ment of battle with an impending fate. I have 
heard that men whose business affairs have been 
in an embarrassed state for months and years, have 
felt, when the " smash" came at last, a quietude of 
spirit, a repose of mind, such as they had not felt 
for a long and weary time. The worst had come ; 
and bankruptcy itself was not so bad as the fear of 
bankruptcy. I have seen, indeed, with my own 



KNOWING THE WORST. 



249 



eyes, men who had shrunk and shriveled into an 
extreme state of tenuity, who had grown pale and 
wrinkled and careworn, hollow-eyed and dragged- 
mouthed, under the pressure of their difficulties, 
make their appearance, after a little space in the 
Fleet Prison or some kindred institution, quite 
sleek and rosy and bright-faced, jaunty and debon- 
naire in their manner, ten years younger everyway, 
as though the worst had come upon them and 
there was nothing now to be feared. Of course, 
this indicates a certain obtuseness of conscience 
and want of sympathy with others, in favor of 
which I have nothing to say. I am only speaking 
of the Rest that ensues from the it having come 
upon us. I can easily imagine, too, that an offender 
against the laws of God and man, endeavoring to 
escape from the pursuing hand of justice, might 
feel infinite relief when the hand has been laid 
on him and he can no longer evade its grasp. I 
think that wretched Falkland, — rare product of the 
genius of William Godwin, — that typical man, vain 
fugitive from a remorseless and untiring Nemesis, 
must have rejoiced when the terrible pursuit was at 
an end. Even death itself has less terror than the 
perpetual uplooking at the Damoclean sword im- 
pending above one's head. It is related in cotem- 
porary annals of the Great Indian rebellion, that 
on more than one occasion there was a sense of 
infinite relief after the storm had burst, and that 
when the mutinous sepoys were everywhere surg- 



250 



REST. 



ing around our Christian people, there was less 
misery in the knowledge of the actual present, than 
in the vague apprehension of the impending evil. 

It was in some mood of this kind that a dear 
friend, who, with the best intentions in the world, 
was always in trouble, — one of those men who 
believe every one and everything, who are never 
to be convinced by any failures or misfortunes, 
who can never profit by experience or grow wise 
by suffering, but go on to the end with unfailing 
trust in humanity, — once wrote, on what he thought 
the eve of a crisis, which never came after all, — for 
though some friends misled, it cannot be said 
betrayed him, others were stanch to the last ; and 
his faith in his fellow-men was not found to be 
ill bestowed, — 

" Rest ! — Yes ; a prison, it may be. 'Tis well ! 
I have fought the battle long, and I have lost — 
Trusted my friends, and counted not the cost 
Of this blind faith in others. So I fell. 
And now that I have long been tempest-tost, 
I find my haven gladly in a cell. 
Water and bread, and just a little light, 
And air it may be, and full leave to pray, 
And I shall not much care for man's despite, 
Waiting, in God's good time, a better day — 
Better to lay one's arms down and to wait, 
Than to fight on, sore-spent, all gashed and gory ; 
For the time cometh, be it soon or late, 
When perfect Rest is link'd with perfect Glory." 

I have a few words more to say in conclusion. 
There is something very soothing and solacing, 



SUPERANNUA TION. 



251 



amidst the cares and distractions, the ceaseless 
goings-to-and-fro of active life, in the thought of 
some day being able to lay down one's burdens 
and to cease from the strenuous business to which 
one has been harnessed for long years, — to make 
over the traces and the collar and the reins, which 
one has worn so long, and the bit one has champed 
for nearly half a century, to a younger and stronger 
horse, and to go out quietly to grass. And yet 
there are some men who shrink from the thought, 
— who have a vague presentiment that if the harness 
cease to brace them up any longer they will fall 
down by the wayside and die. I think it is a 
miserable mistake. Every man should listen to 
the warnings which benignant Nature is continually 
uttering to him. Whether in the autumn of life 
we are cautioned now and then to pause,* or 

* Whilst I am correcting the proofs of this essay, I read in 
one of the daily papers this gratifying intelligence : — "The Prime 
Minister is not ill, still less has he suffered what can be called ' a 
relapse,' however • slight.' He has simply been conscious that 
those were right who advised a little rest after recent hard labors, 
if he wished actually to avoid any return of indisposition which 
has before been induced by overwork. And so successful has been 
the resort to repose, that he will probably be in his place again to- 
day, or at the latest to-morrow, in the full enjoyment of that excel- 
lent health which all have noticed recently." Here, indeed, is an 
example to lesser men. "A stitch in time saves nine," in your 
constitution as well as in your coat. It is true wisdom to take 
heed of these slight warnings. The hardest worker in high place 
that I ever knew, having rejected some timely admonitions of this 
kind, was mercifully laid aside by a broken head in the hunting- 



252 REST. 

whether in the winter of life we are told that the 
time has come for us to cease altogether from 
work, we should never reject those promptings. 
The time must come when younger men will do 
our work better, and, if we remain still at the grind- 
stone, we shall be little more than cumberers of the 
earth. Nay, we may be something worse, — miser- 
able spectacles of decay, not even stately ruins. 
Shall we cling thus to a mere mockery and make- 
belief of work, — sorry " drivelers and shows," — 
with dim eyes, and palsied hands, and vagrant 
memories ? Let us take our pensions thankfully 
in good time ; let us be content to be superan- 
nuated ; let us go cheerfully into retirement before 
people say that we ought to be kicked into it. At 
the close of life we ought to be left to our repose, 
— to have time to take account of eternity. To 
work after we have ceased to be good workmen is 
only to take away so much from the good work 
already done. We may then reverse the words of 
the aphorism above cited, and say, "Orare est 
laborareT We are never too old to pray. Let us 
be thankful that we have time and repose to do it, 
and hopefully wait until the summons comes : — 
" Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter 
into thy rest." 

field, and compelled to cease from the labor of years. And now 
he has gone back to the councils of the nation, all the better for 
that disaster in the field. 



THE BATTLE WITH TIME. 253 

It is only through the gates of death that we 
can grope our way to the fullness of repose. Let 
us then pause and make our houses ready, while 
there is time still left. It is not good to be stricken 
down in the midst of the great battle, as was he of 
whom erst I wrote : — 

His life was one grand battle with old Time. 

From morn till noon, from noon to weary night, 

Ever he fought as only strong men fight; 
And so he passed out of his golden prime 

Into grim hoary manhood ; and he knew 

No rest from that great conflict, till he grew 
Feeble and old, ere years could make him so. 

Then on a bed of pain he laid his head, 
As one sore-spent with labor and with woe; 

" Rest comes at last; I thank thee, God," he said. 
Death came ; upon his brow laid chilly hands, 

And whispered, "Vanquished!" But he gasped out, "No, 
I am the Victor now ; for unto lands 

Where Time's dark shadow cannot fall, I go." 

Ay, but whither ? It is ill thus to die with the 
harness on one's back and the battle-axe in one's 
hand. Better to lay them down ere the dark 
shadow falls, and, resting as best we may upon 
earth, pass away into the Perfect Rest. 

August, 1870. 



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